Part of a family of social activists, Mona Seif grew up
taking an early interest in many of the social issues facing her home country
of Egypt. Her father is a human rights attorney who was imprisoned for five
years, while her mother helped organise demonstrations against the Mubarak
regime during the decades before his downfall. Her brother, Alaa Abd El Fattah,
was imprisoned for 45 days for his blog Manalaa, through which he used to
document abuses by the Mubarak regime. Following in her family’s footsteps,
Seif became known for her participation in dissident movements during and after
the 2011 Arab Spring.
She co-founded the campaign, No to Military Trials for
Civilians, which pushes for the release of those detained during the Egyptian
revolution, and manages a blog called Tahrir Diaries — Diaries Under Military
Rule.
She also regularly writes on her blog Ma3t, requesting that
people come forward with their own stories for publication.
In 2012, Seif was a finalist for the Front Line Award for
Human Rights Defenders at Risk, and in 2013 she was a finalist for Geneva human
rights prize the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, presented by
Human Rights Watch. She told the press in February: “They [the authorities]
cannot silence people with bloodshed.”
When not campaigning for human rights in Egypt, Seif is a
biology graduate student investigating the BRCA1 breast cancer gene and its
mutation pattern in Egyptian patients.
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