Syrian bands rock Beirut's alternative music scene
Dozens of Syrian bands and independent artists have now become mainstays of the Beirut music scene, performing emotive and often bleak songs in front of concert-goers eager for fresh faces.
In a bright Beirut apartment, two members of Khebez Dawle, an alternative rock band from Damascus, practise surrounded by freshly hung laundry, balls of yarn and cups of tea.
"You're still alive, under the siege?" sings Anas Maghrebi, the band's lead singer, in their song "Ayesh", which means alive in Arabic.
Source: Your Middle East
Refugee and migrant deaths in the Mediterranean are a humanitarian crisis
A tide of death is surging on the Mediterranean Sea, the world’s most lethal migrant zone [last year]. Those waters swallowed 3,279 lives in 2014, a number we may one day consider small, if current trends continue.
This month, still not over, up to 2,000 of our fellow global citizens have been reported missing and presumed drowned in the waters off Libya. That’s 20 times what the International Organization for Migration had recorded by this time last year.
Source: Muftah
Is being a teacher a crime?
The secretary of Iran’s teachers’ union, Alireza Hashemi Sanjani, was arrested and taken to Evin Prison on April 18 following a nationwide protest days before.
“Security forces entered Mr. Hashemi’s house around 7:00am on Saturday while he was at work,” Tahereh Naqini, the deputy head of the union told Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA). After his wife phoned Hashemi to inform him about the raid, Naqini said, he immediately returned home. Authorities then placed him under arrest.
In 2011, Hashemi was arrested on charges of “pursuing unionist demands and visiting the families of imprisoned teachers” and sentenced to five years in prison. Naqini told ILNA that she believed the recent arrest was in connection with these previous charges. She said that Hashemi has also been charged with “protest against the government and conspiracy against national security.”
Source: Iran Wire
