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Egypt

This Happened

This Happened — June 10: The Six-Day War Ends

On this day in 1967, the Six-Day War came to an end, as Israel faced off against its Arab neighbors, including Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.

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Belarus May Be Pushing Migrants Into The EU Again — This Time With Russian Help

In 2021, Belarus strongman Lukashenko triggered a migration crisis when he actively drove asylum seekers to the EU. According to the German government, those numbers are on the rise again.

-Analysis-

BERLIN — In the nine months between July 2022 and March 2023 alone, Germany's Federal Police registered 8,687 people who entered Germany undocumented after a Belarus connection. This has emerged from the Ministry of the Interior's response to an inquiry by MP Andrea Lindholz, deputy chair of the Christian Social Union (CSU) parliamentary group, which was made available to Die Welt.

The migration pressure on the Belarus route — which was now supposedly closed after a huge crisis in 2021 that saw Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko threatening to "flood" the EU with drugs and migrants — has thus increased significantly again.

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"Apparently, about half of the people who enter the EU illegally every month via the German-Polish border enter the EU via Belarus," Lindholz told Die Welt. In an autocratic state like this, border crossings on this scale are certainly no coincidence, she said. "It is obvious that these illegal entries are part of a strategy to destabilize the EU."

In addition to flexible controls at the border with Poland, stationary ones are also needed, said Lindholz. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser should agree on a concrete roadmap with Poland "on how to significantly reduce illegal entries into Germany." Lindholz also called on the German government to revoke landing permits for airlines that facilitate illegal migration via Russia and Belarus.

The Belarus route had already caused concern throughout the EU in 2021. At that time, sometimes highly dramatic scenes took place at the border with Poland. Thousands of migrants tried to enter the EU undocumented — many of them transported there by soldiers or border guards of Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko. Poland even feared an attempt to break through the border en masse.

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Sudan's Humanitarian Crisis Is Forcing Refugees To Cross Into Egypt

More than 14,000 Sudanese people have already crossed the border into neighboring Egypt to flee the conflict in their country. On arrival, they say there are chaotic scenes.

ASWAN — In a makeshift tent, as Nubian music buzzes in the background, Aïda Hussein prepares some “jabana." She sells this spiced coffee for a small sum to her compatriots, exhausted after their days-long ordeal escaping the violent battles that have shaken Sudan for more than two weeks.

The clashes between Abdel Fattah Al Burhan’s armed forces and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have already killed more than 528 people and injured 4,599, according to official reports. The generals shared power following a coup in October of 2021. Egypt supports the Sudanese armed forces, despite not having officially positioned themselves in relation to the conflict.

Fighting continues despite a ceasefire. "The scale and speed at which events are unfolding in Sudan (are) unprecedented," the United Nations said in a statement on Sunday, before sending their chief of humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, to the region.

While most of the 75,000 people who fled according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) are internally displaced, some were able to take refuge abroad. According to the Egyptian authorities, more than 14,000 Sudanese nationals crossed into Egypt last week.

They arrived through one of two border crossings. Some 20,000 people have also taken refuge in Chad, very close to western Darfur. Another 6,000 have taken refuge in the Central African Republic, while others have gone to Ethiopia.

One of the first drop-off points for refugees is Karkar’s bus station. It is a three-hour drive from the border and around 30 kilometers south of the touristic city of Aswan. New arrivals describe a chaotic reception, a situation they did not expect from a combat-free zone.

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This Happened - February 16: King Tutankhamun Unearthed

British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered King Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt in November 1922. The tomb was opened on this day in 1923.

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LGBTQ Plus
Laura Valentina Cortés, Inès Mermat, Renate Mattar and Hugo Perrin

LGBTQ+ International: Lithuanian Fairy Tales, Egypt Dating App Gangs — And Other News

Welcome to Worldcrunch’s LGBTQ+ International. We bring you up-to-speed each week on a topic you may follow closely at home, but can now see from different places and perspectives around the world. Discover the latest news on everything LGBTQ+ — from all corners of the planet. All in one smooth scroll!

This week featuring:

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This Happened

This Happened - January 25: The Egyptian Revolution Begins

After the revolution in Tunisia, anti-regime protests spread to Egypt, sparking two weeks of deadly clashes.

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Green
Matt McDonald*

Good COP, Bad COP? How Sharm El-Sheik Failed On The Planet's Big Question

The week-long climate summit in Egypt managed to a backsliding that looked possible at some point, it still failed to deliver on significant change to reverse the effects of global warming.

For 30 years, developing nations have fought to establish an international fund to pay for the “loss and damage” they suffer as a result of climate change. As the COP27 climate summit in Egypt wrapped up over the weekend, they finally succeeded.

While it’s a historic moment, the agreement of loss and damage financing left many details yet to be sorted out. What’s more, many critics have lamented the overall outcome of COP27, saying it falls well short of a sufficient response to the climate crisis. As Alok Sharma, president of COP26 in Glasgow, noted:

"Friends, I said in Glasgow that the pulse of 1.5 °C was weak. Unfortunately it remains on life support."

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Green
Mohamed Ezz and Nada Arafat

Sharm El-Sheikh, What's Lurking Behind COP27 Shine

The Egyptian coastal resort has been reinvented (again) to host world leaders for the COP27, as it aims to cast a climate-financing-hungry Egypt in a favorable light. But the cosmetic changes hide years of harm to the region's ecosystem.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH — Amgad* arrived in Sharm el-Sheikh about 40 years ago, driven by curiosity like many other Egyptian youths at the time to explore this corner of Sinai, newly returned to Egypt in the wake of the 1973 war after a 15 years of Israeli occupation.

What Amgad found was a small Bedouin village sheltered within an immaculate landscape: to the east, the Gulf of Aqaba, teeming with marine creatures and jeweled with coral reefs; to the south, two Egyptian islands — now transferred to Saudi Arabia — that separated Sinai from Saudi Arabia; to the west, valleys and mountains, part of the Great Rift Valley, traversed by the Bedouin tribes who have settled in the area for centuries.

The coastline is home to 200 unique species of coral, 500 species of marine vegetation and various species of fish and marine animals, part of the Egyptian barrier reefs that marine ecology professor Mahmoud Hassan Hanafy tells Mada Masr are among the last sanctuaries for this type of marine life in the world, having demonstrated unique resilience to climate change. Onshore ecosystems also serve to protect marine life, he notes.

If, however, you’re among the thousands converging on the city this month to attend COP27, four decades separate you from the site of natural beauty that Amgad first laid eyes on.

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Society
Ahmed Medhat

Birth Rights And Resources: Why Egypt Has A Record High C-Section Rates

Seven out of ten children in Egypt are born by Caesarian section, over three times the world average, according to recent government data. C-sections may be more profitable and easier to schedule for overworked and understaffed medical personnel, but they represent a higher physical and mental health risk for new mothers and babies. Civil society and the government are trying to bring more awareness — but reversing the trend will take time.

PORT SAID — Nahla, a 39-year-old Egyptian, and recent mother recalls the birth: “On my due date in February, 15 minutes after I got into my hospital bed, the unbearable pain had me kneeling on the ground and I received no support from the medical staff present at that moment," she recalled. "I turned to my husband, asking him to immediately take me out of there and drive me to my doctor for a cesarean section."

Nahla’s doctor told her she wouldn’t be able to endure the pain of vaginal birth, advising her to opt for a C-section, which she ultimately did even though there was no medical necessity for it. It was not until later that she learned that she could have undergone vaginal birth with epidurals or other painkillers..

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Society
Mohamed Abu Deif

Egypt's Overcrowded Christian Churches Are A Fire Risk — Building New Ones Is Risky Too

After a fire at a church in August killed 42 people, Egypt's Christians are worried about the fate of their places of worship, which lack proper infrastructure and financial support to meet safety standards. But, as Egypt's Mada Masr reports, this is not a new problem, and it is one that has been ongoing for years, during which Christians were not given permission to set up churches.

GIZA — The St. Demiana Church is only distinguishable from surrounding buildings in the neighborhood of Imbaba, in northern Giza, by the crosses on its windows and the security kiosk and metal gate encircling its perimeter. Before prayers commence, the church is already packed to the brim, as hundreds of families fill the premises leaving almost no standing room.

As people pack in, the parish priest, Father Ghaios Bekhit, conducts a safety check around the premises. He checks on the state of the electric cables attached to the air conditioning units and ensures the functionality of the fire extinguishers.

His vigilance has been triggered by fear of a fire scenario repeating itself in his own parish, in the aftermath of the tragic fire that broke out just 4 kilometers away in the Martyr Philopateer St. Mercurius [Abu Sefein in Arabic] Church in Imbaba, during a morning mass, said to have been caused by an electric short-circuit in an air conditioning unit in the building. According to the Public Prosecution., 42 people were killed in the August 14 blaze, including 15 children.

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Geopolitics
Beesan Kassab, Daniel O'Connell, Ehsan Salah, Hazem Tharwat and Najih Dawoud

Patronage Or Politics? What's Driving Qatar And Egypt Grand Rapprochement

For Cairo, Qatar had been part of an “axis of evil,” with anger directed at Al Jazeera, the main Qatari outlet, and others critical of Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood ouster. But the vitriol is now gone, with the first ever visit by Egyptian President al-Sisi to Doha.

For the first time since coming to power in 2014, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi traveled to Doha last month on an official visit, a capstone in a steadily building rapprochement between the two countries in the last year.

Not long ago, however, the photo-op capturing the two heads of state smiling at one another in Doha would have seemed impossible. In the wake of the Armed Forces’ ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood government in 2013, Qatar and Egypt traded barbs.

In the lexicon of the intelligence-controlled Egyptian press landscape, Qatar had been part of an “axis of evil” working to undermine Egypt’s stability. Al Jazeera, the main Qatari outlet, was banned from Egypt, but, from its social media accounts and television broadcast, it regularly published salacious and insulting details about the Egyptian administration.

But all of that vitriol is now gone.

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Geopolitics
Mada Masr

Mada Masr Editor Detained After Media Reveals Corruption In Egypt's Ruling Party

The latest report from the Egyptian media about charges against editor-in-chief Lina Attalah and three colleagues following a Sept. 1 article that revealed a scandal within the ruling Nation's Future party.

Note from the Worldcrunch news desk: The independent Egyptian online media Mada Masr, which publishes in Arabic and English, has been a Worldcrunch partner since 2015. As they face further repression and attempts to limit their coverage by government authorities, we are republishing their updates below, and stand together with Mada Masr's editor Linah Attalah and her team in their long efforts for a free press in Egypt:

Mada Masr Editor-in-Chief Lina Attalah, journalists Rana Mamdouh, Sara Seif Eddin and Beesan Kassab were released on bail on Wednesday evening after interrogation sessions at the Cairo Appeals Prosecution.

All four were questioned individually and concurrently, said lawyers acting in their defense.

In Wednesday’s session, Attalah, Mamdouh, Seif Eddin and Kassab were charged with slander and defamation of Nation’s Future Party members, using social media to harass the party members, and publishing false news intended to disturb the public peace and cause damage to the public interest.

Attalah also faces charges of operating a website without a license.

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