2024 COURAGE to WRITE grantee Abdelrahman ElGendy is a winner of the Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press. Congratulations, Abdelrahman!
ElGendy was awarded in the opinion piece category for his article “Is There Life Before Death?” published on January 2nd, 2024 in Al Manassa. This article echoes the struggle of expatriates of Arab origins in the West as they advocate for human rights and defend the values they hold dear, squeezed, as per the author, between the oppression of autocratic regimes at home and the racism they encounter in exile.
The Samir Kassir Foundation is a non-profit civic organization, working to spread the democratic culture in Lebanon and the Arab world, encourage the new talents of free press, and build the movement for a cultural, democratic, and secular renewal.
Learn more about Abdelrahman ElGendy HERE, and read his message on winning the prize:
Today, I received the Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press, the highest journalism honor in the Arab world, in the Opinion Article category for my piece on Al-Manassa, “Is There Life Before Death?” The Samir Kassir Award award holds immense value for me. It is a profound honor to join the ranks of previous recipients, including the great and dearly missed Mohamed Abu El-Gheit, may he rest in peace, and to be part of this lineage of journalists and writers that begins with the martyred Samir Kassir himself. I am deeply grateful to the Samir Kassir Foundation and the jury for this recognition. My article addresses the genocide perpetrated by the occupation against Palestinians in Gaza, the experience of bearing an Arab identity amid the genocide of our kin, and how we have become outcasts in a world where both our homeland and Western countries reject us. It questions how we can move beyond and dismantle Western moral superiority when our disposability is not a failure of the world order, but one of its integral functions. I dedicate this award to the journalists of Gaza, the living and the martyred, who have taught and continue to teach us the true meaning of journalism and the essence of its mission, while shattering the myth of Western journalism and its violent, propagandist agenda masked as “neutrality.” I must also mention and pay respects to the journalists and writers of Egypt who have been imprisoned, exiled, and persecuted since 2013. It is ironic but sadly unsurprising that an opinion article wins an Arab award for freedom of press while published on Al-Manassa-the exceptional Egyptian model of independent Arab journalism- which is currently banned in Egypt by its military dictatorship for this very reason. Despite the sorrow we endure and the bleak outlook across our Arab world, the pursuit of freedom of expression remains a noble goal that drives us to keep putting pen to paper. Revolution is a perpetual act of remembrance.