MER Article Naji al-'Ali Remembered A ragged, barefoot boy, hands clutched behind his back, stands witness to the scene before him. The small boy in the cartoon is Naji al-‘Ali, popular cartoonist, at age 10, when he was expelled from his native Palestine to Lebanon in 1948. Naji used to say that the boy was a symbol of the Palestinia Joan Mandell • 3 min read
MER Article Germany's Greens and Israel The German Greens are having a hard time defining a Middle East policy. No wonder. Besides the usual difficulties of the whole European left, they are German. How hard it could be was brought home with a thud by the six Greens who toured Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and the occupied territories i Diana Johnstone • 7 min read
MER Article Document: Testimony of a Syrian Censor He does not wish to be identified because he believes that the long arm of the Syrian government will reach him anywhere in the world. Take his word for it, he said, he knew them better than anyone else. He ought to; he was once a censor in the ministry of information. He is also a writer and journa (Author not identified) • 6 min read
MER Article Prison, Gender, Praxis Do you, too, believe that I betrayed my motherhood when I left you, against my will, to go to prison?…. I have read an article by the Moroccan writer Hadiya Sa‘id…she expressed a point of view maintained by some of our friends who love me and are concerned about you. She says that I must cease my po Marilyn Booth • 22 min read
MER Article Police Riot in Yarmuk Just after midnight on May 15, 1986, some 75 Special Forces of the Public Security Department stormed a dormitory at Yarmuk University to put an end to a student demonstration. They tear-gassed and clubbed the students with “a zeal that bordered on the ruthless,” according to witnesses. At least thr Joe Stork • 1 min read
MER Article "A Policeman on My Chest, A Scissor in My Brain" On Wednesday, June 16, 1987, police units entered the offices of the Jordanian Writers’ Association, ordered all writers and employees out, then searched and sealed the premises. The order to disband the Association came directly from the desk of Prime Minister Zaid al-Rifa‘i. Under the martial law A Special Correspondent • 11 min read
MER Article "The Lion's Right to Roar in His Cage" Nabil al-Hilali has been active as a labor and civil liberties lawyer in Egypt since the 1950s. He serves on the executive committees of the Egyptian Bar Association and the International Committee of Democratic Jurists. He ran as an independent in the parliamentary elections of April 1987. In 1986 Joe Stork • 6 min read
MER Article An Unusual Hunger Strike in Istanbul Sporting bleached blond hair, black stockings, heavy mascara and mauve-tinted lenses, some 30 homosexuals from Istanbul began a hunger strike at Taksim Park on April 27, the first day of Ramadan. Nearly all of them transvestites, and all proudly wearing bright pink boutonnieres, they said they would (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article "They Say There Is Democracy in This Country?" “Unless you allow our sons, the journalists that you beat up, to come back here, you will have to move my dead body from this spot. They say there is democracy in this country -- where? As if what they do to our people inside weren’t enough, they drag and beat us up, 70-year-old mothers and all. If Altan Yalpat • 1 min read
MER Article Torture in Turkey Political prisoners in Turkey have long confronted a chilling reality: once arrested, they face almost certain torture. Based on thousands of reports over many years, Amnesty International has concluded that “anybody detained in the country for political reasons is at great risk of being tortured, a Martha Wenger • 1 min read
MER Article Turkey: Reading the Small Print In early April, the president of the banned Turkish Peace Association invited friends from END (European Nuclear Disarmament) and other peace groups across Europe to join him and the TPA executive in Istanbul in celebrating the tenth anniversary of the founding of the TPA. They planned to hold a pub John Mepham • 16 min read
MER Article The Trial of Khamis Chamari For a few hours on Saturday morning last June 27, a small antechamber in Tunis’s main court building was filled to capacity with a veritable who’s who of Tunisia’s opposition. At any other time and venue, those present would have risked arrest for unlawful assembly. But there -- beneath a large disc Dirk Vandewalle • 3 min read
