Bullets, tear gas and flirting with injury were common themes this summer for some students and alumni, rather than the idle day full of margaritas and sleeping in at Myrtle Beach. However, the idea to document, observe and partake in struggles for civil rights made it worth the sacrifice of a day at the beach.
The largest protests in 60 years erupted the second day of Benjamin Quigley’s short vacation to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The senior in biological sciences left his hotel in the downtown capital to document the protesting, while experiencing the full effects of crossfire tear gas.
Mohammad Moussa , a senior in electrical engineering, and Sameer Abdel-Khalek , a senior in environmental technology, spent their summer traveling through Egypt and Tunisia to uncover the “hidden” stories of the protests of the Arab Spring, according to Moussa . Along with friends from UNC-Chapel Hill, Moussa and Abdel-Khalek observed protests in Cairo and Tunis and met with organizers of the Arab Spring.
Chris Hondros , alumnus of 1993, took the documentation of civil unrest to the limit. The Pulitzer Prize-nominated photojournalist died while on an assignment to capture images of the civil war in Libya, April 20.
According to Abdel-Khalek , people around the world are having internal revolutions and he spent this summer living with and understanding them.
“The privileges and rights we have are something we cannot take for granted,” Abdel-Khalek said. “Also, we need to help others achieve that self determination and their struggles overseas because it is what connects us as humans—we actually need to care about one another in a globalized way, and it can promote peace and not war.”
In the line of duty: April 20
It would be no stretch to say Chris Hondros pursued and lived for action and conflict. After serving as photo editor of the Agromeck yearbook, the 1993 alumnus worked as a small paper photographer until he moved on to documenting conflict zones like Kosovo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Palestine, Iraq and Liberia. Due to these coverages , Hondros won a nomination as a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Breaking News Photography.
Chasing the story during the civil war in Libya combined with the NATO airstrikes in Libya seemed like business as usual for Hondros , until an explosion from a Libyan government, rocket-propelled grenade killed him and Tim Hetherington , the director of the film Restrepo .
Freedom Rider lives history: May 6
Doaa Dorgham , a senior in psychology, was sitting in her interpersonal relationships and race class when she overheard her professor announce applications for the Freedom Riders tour, an educational tour engaging students in issues of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s .
“I was thinking it’s absolutely incredible and I would be so humbled to be in the presence of American heros ,” Dorgham said. “That’s what ignited that excitement in me.”
Dorgham never heard about the Freedom Riders campaign beforehand.
“This was a pivotal moment in history and not enough credit was due to it,” Dorgham said. “Learning about their non-violent form of protest, it seemed like an essential tool to bring back to our community.”
PBS and American Experience chose 40 students to ride the tour of the Freedom Riders, a civil rights campaign to challenge staunch opposition of integration. The original freedom riders left Washington, D.C . on May 4, 1961 and traveled on public transportation en route to New Orleans. However, the riders never finished the tour.
“The original riders experienced a lot of violent confrontations,” Dorgham said. “In Anniston, Alabama their bus was fire bombed. They were actually flown back by the Kennedy administration. Through Nashville, Tennessee, people would encourage the riders to keep going. Their goal was to fill up the jails. They could never get past Mississippi.”
According to Dorgham , her first stop in Greensboro was eye opening for her understanding of the movement for civil rights.
“I wasn’t aware that the sit-ins actually first occurred in Greensboro,” Dorgham said. “I think it’s really influential that our school system focuses on our participation in the civil rights movement. It’s something I feel is often overlooked.”
The selected students partaking in the 2011 Freedom Ride not only reflected on the historical context of the influential movement, but also the way the original riders coped with the stigma of activism in the south.
“We went to a church in Charlotte and began to understand the effects of religious doctrines and what helped the Freedom Riders fight the enemy,” Dorgham said. “That idea of faith that really pushed them was powerful.”
Dorgham , an active member of the Muslim Student Association, said she will apply the lessons of faith and activism to her own goals.
“Our generation is set on this ideology of apathy, and it’s a very dangerous ideology,” Dorgham said. “Being a college student and seeing it, it’s sickening. Collectively, if we stand behind something we can make a change… In the words of Helen Singleton, ‘Find something that really pisses you off and do something about it.'”
Dorgham said the new civil rights challenges of the U.S . include immigrant rights, homosexuality rights and environmental policies.
“The United States of America has always been an example of what freedom, justice and prosperity should be,” Dorgham said. “Given the global perspective of things, that’s kind of diminished. It’s really up to us to prop us back and stick to those hallmarks that this country was really established on.”
Uncovering the untold stories of a revolution: June 16
Reliving a revolution through the stories of those who partook in the Egyptian and Tunisian unrests was the goal of Mohammad Moussa , a senior in electrical engineering, and Sameer Abdel-Khalek , a senior in environmental technology. They knew what happened during the Arab Spring, but they didn’t know what to expect when they got on the ground to document uncovered stories for their Poetic Portraits of a Revolution ( PPR ) project.
Some saw them as friends communicating the narratives of political activists, others, like the police, saw them as American spies.
While working with connections in Suez, Moussa , Abdel-Khalek and their friends from UNC-Chapel Hill, Will McInerney and Kane Smego , evaded imprisonment due to luck in timing, according to Moussa .
Flirting with danger was common for Moussa , an Arabic-speaking Lebanese-American, and Abdel-Khalek of Egyptian descent. Riots in Tahrir Square still persisted months after the famous ones that pushed former president Hosni Mubarak out of office. Abdel-Khalek had his Nikon D7000 and a backpack of gear to document the experience.
“It was wild, witnessing it all,” Abdel-Khalek said. “All I did was shoot, shoot, shoot. We have so many memories and images of the event.”
Moussa said despite the life-changing experiences he had on the ground, the reason for the trip was to meet “extraordinary ordinary” people. Upon their arrival to Egypt, the PPR team regrouped with contacts they had previously found while still in the U.S . – people they would talk to who experienced and participated in the revolution, according to Abdel-Khalek .
“We tried to focus on regular people,” Moussa said. “We got to know a medic named Mustafa Marwan , an Egyptian medic who volunteered in Tahrir to take care of the injured during the protests before Mubarak stepped down. He also volunteered in Libya and worked to help those people out. He’s a nano-technology engineer, so he was nothing to being a medic on the field but he said it’s his responsibility to care for his people.”
Social media also played a large role in the organization of the revolutions. The team met with Twitter users Sand Monkey— Mahmoud Salem—and Alien One— Amina Zaki . According to Abdel-Khalek , these two Twitter users organized and inspired people to hit the streets in a time when freedom of expression was unheard of.
The PPR team has written seven pieces of spoken word poetry that aired on WUNC , the local NPR station. The team also aspires to publish a book, develop a photo installment in the Ackland Museum and produce a theatrical production in conjunction with the UNC Performing Arts Center, according to Abdel-Khalek .
“People are having internal revolutions, regardless of race, age or religion,” Abdel-Khalek said. “With these issues, they say ‘They aren’t ready for democracy.’ Nobody is ready for democracy, you experience it and embark on it and try it out. I am honored to have taken part of that in Cairo and Tunis.”
The misadventures of a layover: July 9
Benjamin Quigley, a senior in biological sciences, said he never expected his vacation to Malaysia would turn into a political storm, culminating with the largest peaceful protest in the country in the last 60 years, according to the Malaysian newspaper The Star.
After traveling throughout India with the Caldwell Fellows program, Quigley took a layover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, capital of the Southeast Asian country and hub of Air Asia.
“Air Asia is a great way to get cheap flights around Asia and it’s based out of Kuala Lumpur,” Quigley said. “I decided to stay in the capital for a bit and after a few days in town, civilians started to hit the streets to protest.”
Campaigning for clean government, the protestors adamantly stayed non-violent, which is something you don’t see often,” Quigley said.
Grabbing his camera, Quigley left his hostel to follow protestors a few blocks to the city center, where the police confronted the crowd with tear gas July 9, according to Quigley.
“The protests were very much like organized strikes,” Quigley said. “It mirrored what Gandhi did in India.”
Caught in the crossfire of tear gas, Quigley was able to capture images of the experience with his camera. He said this was the first time the police seriously cracked down.
“I definitely did get hit with tear gas,” Quigley said. “That stuff is heinous. It gets in your lungs and makes your eyes blink and roll around. Even the pores on your skin get irritated.”
Though the experience was a painful one, Quigley said it opened his eyes to global struggles for civil rights and democracy.
Feeling the heat of London riots: August 6
Sara Yasin , alumna of 2009 and graduate student of the London School of Economics and Politics, lived in the quaint neighborhood of Stanford Hill in northeast London. That was until riots broke out August 6, after the police shot and killed a black youth two days prior.
“[My neighborhood] is down the road from Tottenham , where things first started out,” Yasin said. “It’s close to Dalston , one of the places that could have potentially have been looted and vandalized.”
Despite the widespread looting and violence that has taken place in prominent neighborhoods like Hackney and Wood Green, citizens of Dalston stood up to rioters, according to Yasin .
“There is a strong Turkish community in Dalston , but the Turks and the Kurds came together to defend their neighborhood,” Yasin said. “They wanted to protect their shops—because a lot of the Turkish businesses saw what happened in other neighborhoods and they rallied together. There are videos of Turkish men sitting outside and waiting for the looters to come.”
The citizens of Dalston chased looters away from the neighborhood Yasin said.
“If you see it, it’s a pretty funny video.”
As the riots continued, Yasin found alternative forms of transportation to work instead of walking, due to the insecurity of the neighborhoods.
“We felt pretty unsafe because we didn’t know when things were going to hit near us,” Yasin said. “On that first Monday night, a lot of the shops closed early and a lot of us tried to get home before dark.”
Some of Yasin’s neighbors decided to board up their windows and rumors spread about a stabbing in Stanford Hill.
“This is one of the most complicated things I’ve ever thought about,” Yasin said. “It showed these inequalities that are deeply embedded in the system that haven’t been dealt with.”
According to Yasin , looting and violence are not proper ways to answer the issue of poverty and inequality in Britain.
“What I think is most unfortunate is that people lashed out in their own communities,” Yasin said. “The violence wasn’t directed toward just corporations, but also mom-and-pop type stores.”
Moving forward, Yasin said the uncertainty is discouraging but residents of London are taking matters of rebuilding into their own hands.
“People rallied together with a community spirit,” Yasin said. “But these riots are spread out across the country, it and shows the problems of programs getting cut and the poor suffering. We can’t find the solution if we don’t see the problem. It aggravates me.”
Sameer Abdel-Khalek, senior in environmental technology, took this photo of injured protesters in Tahrir Square while documenting the struggle in Egypt June 28. Photo courtesy of Sameer Abdel-Khalek.
