Habiba Ahmed Abd-Elaziz Ramdan
Habiba Ahmed was a young Egyptian journalist who worked at an English language newspaper based in the UAE. When the political events escalated in Egypt in June of 2013, she took a break from work and returned to Egypt to be closer to the unfolding events. Her family was members of the Muslim Brotherhood with her father acting as one of the advisors to the former President Mohamed Morsi. Habiba had her own views that she shared on her social media, a lot of which were criticisms for the Muslim Brotherhood and its politics. Her mother used to chastise her for her criticism against the Muslim Brotherhood.
She contributed to social work, for example providing entertainment for sick children—everyone remembers a photo of her wearing a red nose and painting her face with many colors during one of her visits to a children’s hospitals to bring joy to kids. Another photo of her carrying a bottle of lemon juice and a piece of paper in the other hand represented how she had cast her vote for Mohamed Morsi for president simply for lack of a better choice after the presidential race had come down to him and the former prime minister of Egypt, Ahmed Shafik.
When the sit-in at Rabaa Al-Adwya started Habiba went to participate in it, partly as a journalist and partly as an Egyptian with an opinion on what the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces wanted to impose on Egypt after the declaration of a military coup on the July 3rd, 2013.
One of the things that Habiba is most remembered for was a written dialogue that had taken place between her and her mother a talk show. In a phone call with her mother, while she was covering the Rabaa Al-Adwya sit-in on the morning of Wednesday the 14th of August 2013, she said:
“Mom… I’m standing here facing snipers. One of them is threatening to kill me if I don’t leave. Please pray for me to have steadiness…”
According to witnesses of the incident, bullets poured down like rain and Habiba’s peers kept screaming at her: “Habiba come back! Habiba come back!” But she kept moving forward with her camera when a sniper hit her with a bullet. According to the forensics report, the cause of death was a bullet through the heart that led to fracturing of the sternum.