STOCKHOLM – Egypt's IYDA (Intercultural Youth Dialogue Association) and Sweden's Sensus have organised a programme to help young people to call for democracy and justice. Both Sensus and IYDA provide meeting places for young people from around the world to participate in study circles, courses and certification programmes. Together, these organisations have given the opportunity for four young people from Egypt and Tunisia to represent their countries and share their own experiences during the Arab Spring revolutions with Swedish undergraduates and senior school students at different cities in Sweden. These four people, three from Egypt and one from Tunisia, come from different backgrounds and all participated in the Arab revolutions in one way or another. During this two-week programme, which started on September 15 and runs until October 1, the Arab representatives have been giving presentations about their experiences. Appropriately, the first to speak was the representative from Tunisia, where the flame of the Arab Spring was lit. Qaciem Jilidi, a blogger and a columnist for the Open Democracy website, told audiences what happened in the early days of a revolution that toppled Tunisian leader Ben Ali, as well as briefly describing the current Tunisian political scene. Qaciem handed the torch to Egypt, whose Mohamed Ismail, a 22-year-old tourism student, focused on the factors that led the Egyptians to revolt. He also stressed the role played by social media such as Facebook and Twitter, in the preparations before the first demonstrations that turned into a revolution. Ismail highlighted governmental corruption, poverty, disease and the violation of human rights – the things that made the Egyptians revolt. “The Arabs' image has improved since the revolution, but the Western media are trying to deform this image again by broadcasting the violence that erupted after the release of the movie that insults the Prophet Muhammed," said Ismail, who spent the whole of the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square. After his presentation, his colleague Maryam Raafat, a 27-year-old journalist who works for this newspaper, gave her presentation, based mainly on the interviews she has conducted with leading revolutionary figures. Maryam said that Mubarak's regime used the media to deform the image of these protesters by describing them as thugs and spies with foreign agendas, aiming to destroy the country. She also talked about the street children in Egypt, whose presence in Tahrir during the revolution was misunderstood by the public. The old regime called these children criminals, when really they are victims of social corruption. Maryam then handed over to Doha Samir, a 24-year-old lecturer in the Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences at Cairo University, who described the political polarisation in Egypt in the wake of the revolution and the conflicts between the Islamists and secularists. She ended by discussing the challenges facing the Muslim Brotherhood since taking power. “This is a good opportunity to give the West the inside story and shatter stereotypical misconceptions about Muslims and the Arab world," stressed Doha. So far, these four Arab voices in Sweden have given presentations at Sodertorn Hogskola University, Stockholm University and several senior schools, while holding open discussions with prominent Swedish MPs and meeting with prominent members of NGOs in Stockholm. The second week of the programme will see them fly to other cities in Sweden to continue their programme, such as Umea, Malmo and Goteborg.
