“I’m tired, I want to die,” Nael Mohamed, a 14 year-old Sudanese boy, once expressed after he was attacked by two Egyptians in the streets of Cairo. Captured in a video that was later uploaded to TikTok, the two men were seen throwing stones and mocking him for his skin colour and ethnicity. After the incident sparked outrage on social media, a Giza court sentenced the two Egyptian men to two years in prison, and fined each defendant EGP 100,000 (USD 6,250 as at the time of publication). However, this incident is not an individual case, but rather part of a wider cultural problem. While social media has helped to expose the ugly sides of Egyptian humour, there are few nationwide campaigns that treat this particular phenomenon as a much deeper challenge than just individual incidents. Homaar (Donkey). Habla (Foolish). Kalb (Dog). Reading this words aloud without any context, it becomes clear for anyone that they are offensive. But in Egypt, they are commonly used as jokes. Egyptian multimedia companyDS+ recently released the campaign “Da Msh Hzar” (This is Not a Joke), which exposes bullying culture in Egypt, and educates…
Da Msh Hezaar (This Is Not a Joke): New Campaign Exposes Egypt’s Bullying Culture
October 29, 2022
