DangerHere I am at Heathrow waiting for my flight to Cairo. This blog has been up for over a week now, but I’m reluctant to fill it w. content. My ramblings anyway. Headed to Egypt for a conference convened by the Egyptian Human Rights Council, a government-appointed group headed by Boutros-Boutros Ghali, the country’s former Foreign Minister and UN Secretary-General.

I spent the last 2 hours reading a stack of HRW reports on Egypt issued in the past year: homosexuals tortured in prison, women’s unequal access to divorce, police crackdown on anti-war activists, NGO marginalization & repression, rendition of Islamists to Egypt. All sorts of grim stuff; the government is quite nasty. The Minister of Foreign Affairs accepted to meet with by colleague Ambassador Singh, but refuses to meet with Ayman, who is our local campaigner in Cairo.

So this looks like an interesting week ahead! First the conference, then a fieldvisit to Al Alamein, then New Year’s and maybe even some tourism?! We’ll see. I first have to get into the country with these reports, my video camera, my digital camera, etcetera. Watch this post 4 more news…

Mary