Hossam el-Hamalawy (, ; AKA 3arabawy , ; born 14 July 1977) is an Egyptian journalist, blogger, photographer and socialist activist. He is a member of the Trotskyist Revolutionary Socialists and the Center for Socialist Studies.
Early life and career El-Hamalawy started working as a journalist in 2002 for the English language Cairo Times, where he covered protests, trials of dissidents and police torture news. He later joined the Los Angeles Times as a correspondent in Cairo. El-Hamalawy also freelanced for a broad array of local and foreign news organizations, including Bloomberg News and the BBC, and worked as a researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW). He also worked as a managing editor for the leftist daily El-Badeel and was the founding managing editor of Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition as well as being one of founding editorial team of Ahram Online.
El-Hamalawy was a visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Journalism in UC Berkeley, in 2007.
Activism
Student activism
El-Hamalawy attended the American University in Cairo (AUC) where he graduated with a BA in economics in 1999. Afterward, he pursued an MA in political science at the same university, writing his dissertation on the 1977 Egyptian "Bread Uprising". While still an undergraduate student at the AUC, el-Hamalawy joined the Revolutionary Socialists in 1998. He belongs to the second generation of the organization which joined the movement in the second half of the 1990s. This particular group of activists were credited with reviving the political left on university campuses, after two decades where the Islamists held the upper hand. El-Hamalawy was detained and tortured by deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's State Security Investigations Service (SSI) in 2000, allegedly with the institution's complicity. Because of his student activism, the Egyptian government maintained a security file on el-Hamalawy. As a result, he was refused employment as a professor by Egyptian universities and he was banned from entering the AUC campus for a year after he finished his MA in 2002. A picture of him was also left with the AUC security guards for several years later with instructions not to be let into campus if there were any ongoing protests. He was later an invited as guest speaker at lectures at AUC nonetheless.Loewenstein, p.72.
Anti-government protests El-Hamalawy was involved in a series of demonstrations in Cairo in 2000 expressing solidarity with the Palestinian al-Aqsa Intifada. According to el-Hamalawy, that particular protest served as the precursor to further anti-Mubarak protests which occurred in later years. He was picked up after one week from the start of the protests by the (SSI).Loewenstein, p.74.
In May 2002, he was detained and held at the local Nasr City SS office, during a crackdown on leftist activists prior to planned pro-Palestine protests on the Nakba anniversary.
On 20 March 2003, he attended a demonstration in Tahrir Square protesting the US invasion of Iraq and was allegedly beaten by Egyptian security forces dispersing the rally. On 22 March, el-Hamalawy was arrested by four plainclothes security officers while leaving a restaurant in Cairo. He was detained with other youth activists at al-Gamaliyya Police Station and was released shortly afterward.Human Rights Watch, pp.21–22.
Hamalawy was a core member of Kefaya, a grassroots Egyptian movement founded in 2004 that organized demonstrations against the Mubarak government in the years preceding the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.LeVine, p.60.
2006 el-Mahalla el-Kubra strike
El-Hamalawy was involved in the el-Mahalla strikes of 2006. Through using his ability to spread the news of the strike through his blog, he was able to give the strikes wider attention which was ultimately one of the key factors that led to their success. In 2008 he made a speech over viewing the events that occurred on the ground in el-Mahalla during the strikes, noting that the women of el-Mahalla were the essential and initial figures who lead the demonstrations and ignited them to the point that they chanted "Where are the men? Here we are, the women!" Even though el-Hamalawy comes from a middle-class family, the workers were pleased with his passion and help, even calling him the "strike's foreign minister." El-Hamalawi also helped the workers organize and mobilize, which made the strike very effective and was another reason why the workers were able to have their demands fulfilled.
2008 Egyptian general strike
Demanding a higher minimum wage, in February 2008 left-wing activists such as Kamal el-Fayoumi who worked in the state-run textile industry in el-Mahalla organized one of the largest anti-Mubarak labor protests since Mubarak became president in 1981, with around 10,000 factory workers protesting in the streets. Meanwhile, the doctors union voted to go on a national strike on 15 March and university professors launched a national strike on 23 March.
On 6 April 2008, thousands of policemen occupied el-Mahalla and took control of many of the factories in an attempt to obstruct the strike. Thousands of residents including the urban poor, unemployed youth, and other workers joined the street demonstrations, protesting Mubarak, suspected corruption in his government, and price inflation. El-Hamalawy stated that "The demonstrators were met with police tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition," and at least two men were killed. The protest continued for two more days with demonstrators hurling stones at security forces and armored vehicles.
Bloggers and citizen journalists (including el-Hamalawi, Wael Abbas, Alaa Abd El-Fattah and others) used Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, blogs and other social media tools to report on the strike, alert their networks about police activity, organize legal protection and draw attention to their efforts.
Blogging
Since May 2006, el-Hamalawy maintained a blog on the website The Arabist. The Arabic and English-language blog covered various topics mostly related to Egypt, but also the Arab world, focused particularly on workers strikes, police abuse, corruption and global revolutionary movements.Schneider, p.33. In 2006, he left The Arabist to set up his own website named "3arabawy" ("the Bedouin") which has since been one of Egypt's most popular blogs.
At the time el-Hamalawy noted that the Egyptian blogosphere had undergone a rapid expansion and ideological diversification since the 2005 Egyptian parliamentary election. He viewed social media as a means of publicly communicating to the outside world abuses carried out by the Egyptian authorities as well as street protests against the government. Despite the popularity of el-Hamalawy's blog, only a minority of his readers were working class Egyptians due to the lack of internet access in the country and because most of his posts were written in English. Most of his Egyptian followers were young, urban and educated (Half of the internet traffic coming to his blog is from Cairo). Nonetheless, el-Hamalawy's blog posts were in demand by the Western English-language press. Relevant sectors of the Western mainstream media relied on local bloggers—especially those like el-Hamalawy who had spent time as freelance journalists for Western news agencies—for immediate and first-hand accounts of events in Egypt that were not covered by mainstream Egyptian media. El-Hamalawy believed it was because of his independence from any editorial hierarchy, that he, among other bloggers, was able to regularly document and publish allegations of torture by the Egyptian authorities and the increasing occurrence of sexual harassment and assault in Egypt. The use of photographs and videos made it difficult for the Egyptian government or state-run media to deny the allegations.
2011 Egyptian revolution
Because of his experience in earlier demonstrations against the Mubarak government, el-Hamalawy was one of the first participants and organizers of the Egyptian Revolution that commenced on 25 January 2011. On that first day of protest, el-Hamalawy stated to Al-Jazeera that the demonstrations were "necessary to send a message to the Egyptian regime that Mubarak is no different than Ben Ali and we want him to leave too." Tunisian President Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali had been previously overthrown on 18 January as a result of mass popular protests against his government. He also told Al-Jazeera, "People are fed up of Mubarak and of his dictatorship and of his torture chambers and of his failed economic policies. If Mubarak is not overthrown tomorrow then it will be the day after. If it's not the day after it's going to be next week."Three dead in Egypt protests. Al-Jazeera English. 25 January 2011. Accessed on 2012-01-16. Mubarak resigned from his post on 11 February, transferring his authority to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).
El-Hamalawy stated that the revolution was the result of "a process brewing for several years." He claimed that the overthrow of Mubarak had been stirring as early as 2002, when pro-Palestinian riots around Cairo University fought Central Security Forces chanting: "Hosni Mubarak is just like Sharon." El-Hamalawy further noted that "activists from small groups have been agitating for these days of anger ... but no one can claim it [the revolution]."El-Deeb, Sarah. Egypt's uprising unites society in rage. Associated Press. NBC News. 29 January 2011.
Post-Mubarak
After the fall of Mubarak during the revolution, el-Hamalawy was among many protesters who stormed and seized the offices of the State Security Investigations Service (SSI) in Nasr City and was able to visit the cell where he had been imprisoned, later writing on his Twitter feed that he could not stop crying. He wrote "Entered the small compound where I was locked. Man, I can't believe it still... Many are literally crying. We can't find the interrogation rooms. This is a citadel." Since storming the SSI offices, el-Hamalawy has become the main force behind a "naming and shaming" website "(Piggipedia)" targeting former SSI personnel who were involved in the alleged torture of dissidents. Their names are linked to allegations and photos.
On 30 May 2011, el-Hamalawy and television host Reem Maged were given a summons on 30 May 2011 to appear before military prosecution after Maged brought el-Hamalawy on her show where he criticized the role of military police; adding: "I hold the head of the military police responsible for torturing activists". He claimed several cases of torture by the military police towards the demonstrators and about the attacks to uncover virginity, which were widely raised in Egyptian public opinion afterward. El-Hamalawy had also criticized the lack of transparency regarding military finances, stating "any institution in the country that takes taxes from us should be open to question."Quote of the Day. TIME. 1 June 2011. Accessed on 2012-01-17. Both were released Tuesday after "chatting" with Military Prosecution and el-Hamalawy was asked to hand in reports of army abuses to authorities.