User:Ocaasi/Heba

Mona Seif (منى سيف, ) is a female Egyptian activist who used social media in the 2011 Egyptian revolution, and against military trials for civilian protesters. She is a biology graduate student, working on the BRCA1 breast cancer gene.

Background
Seif grew up in a family of activists, and activism was a constant topic of discussion in Mona's childhood. Her father, Ahmad Seif, is a human rights attorney who was imprisoned five years. During his detention, he was tortured. Her mother, Laila Soueif, is also an activist and a mathematics professor. She helped organize demonstrations against the Mubarak regime over the decades before his downfall. Her mother is "known on the streets as brash and courageous, and has on numerous occasions faced down baton-wielding policemen with nothing but her scolding, scathing, booming voice and steely eyes". Mona's brother Alaa co-created the Egyptian blog aggregator Manalaa and in 2005 began to document abuses by the Mubarak regime. Alaa was arrested at a demonstration in 2006 and imprisoned for 45 days, during which Mona and his wife Manal helped organize an online campaign to free him. Mona's younger sister, Sanaa, is also involved in organizing protests.

Seif is a graduate student in cancer biology. She is studying the BRCA1 breast cancer gene and its mutation pattern in Egyptian patients. She says she is working full-time in cancer research, and also full-time in human rights activism.

2011 revolution
In the year leading up to the revolution Mona became involved in the dissent movement, spreading awareness and attending demonstrations. Between January 25 and February 5, the members of Mona's immediate family and many members of their extended family gathered together in the Tahrir Square protests. Mona recalls "It was a life-changing moment for most of the people in Tahrir Square. You could see the gunshots at people...".

Post-Mubarak
Seif is a member of No to Military Trials for Civilians, a group pushing for the release of those detained during the revolution, the movement of civilians from military courts to trials by a civil judge, and, investigation of torture allegations involving military police. Seif wrote on her blog Ma3t, about the military police during crackdowns on Tahrir protesters, requesting people come forward with their stories.

She has been critical of the action's of Egypt's interim ruling body the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) saying, of the release of protesters without full exoneration: “The fact that they have suspended sentences does not give them the pride they deserve as revolutionaries who did nothing wrong."

Seif estimates that military courts have sentenced 7,000 civilians since former Hosni Mubarak's ouster in February, 2011. She notes that there has been a shift in the SCAF's approach since March and that protesters are now getting suspended sentences rather than the 3-5 year sentences they were previously getting. She speculates that this may be an attempt to stop the regular marches and may also be due to the pressure applied by international human right groups.

She has continued to criticize tactics of the SCAF: "We have evidence that the military right now is targeting protesters. ... They selected known figures of the Tahrir protest. They selected people who were known and they tortured and beat them up...and if you read or listen to the testimonies of those who were released, which are a few, we still have a lot of people detained unconstitutionally. And you see that it's not just that they're getting tortured or beaten up, but there's an element of the Army trying to break the revolutionary spirit."

Part of Seif's project involves asking detainees who have been released to record what happened to them. In some cases she says she has managed to get their testomies immediately after their release and so record bruise marks and burns. It is Seif's opinion that with these cases the only way to fight them is via the internet.

In 2012, she was a finalist for the Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk, which ultimately went to Syrian blogger Razan Ghazzawi.

Controversy
When it was announced in April 2013 that Seif was a finalist for the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders presented by Human Rights Watch, both she and HRW were criticized. Seif calls Israel a 'real terrorist'. She was called a radical, and "an Egyptian terrorist sympathizer," an idea echoed by Amr Bakly, an Egyptian human rights activist.