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The History Hour

Egypt's first democratic Presidential election

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4879 Ratings

🗓️ 25 June 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In June 2012, Egypt held its first ever free democratic Presidential election. Mohamed Morsi, representing the Muslim Brotherhood, emerged victorious. Ben Henderson spoke to Rabab El-Mahdi, Chief Strategist to one of Morsi’s rival candidates. She described what it was like to be involved in the first election of its kind, how Morsi tried to recruit her, and the personal impact of political campaigning in such a polarised country.

In June 1982 a young Chinese-American engineer was murdered with a baseball bat by two white men in the US city of Detroit. The lenient sentences the perpetrators received sparked an Asian-American activist movement with protests across the US. At the time, America was going through an economic depression and many blamed Japan, which was perceived to be flooding the US with its cars. For Asian-Americans, it was a time of fear. Farhana Haider spoke to Helen Zia, one of the activists who led the fight for justice. This programme was first broadcast in 2017.

In 2003, Dr Nayana Patel, who ran her own fertility clinic in the state of Gujarat in India, carried out her first surrogacy procedure. It involved a surrogate mother and her own daughter. Dr Patel's clinic would go on to become one of the biggest in India attracting Western couples. It was legalised in 2002 but due to growing criticism, the government banned couples from the West from paying Indian surrogates to bear their children in 2015, arguing that the industry was exploiting poor women. Reena Stanton-Sharma spoke to Dr Nayana Patel.

In 1985, the first robot-assisted medical surgery took place in Vancouver, Canada. It’s now become a standard feature of operating theatres worldwide. The original gadget was named Arthrobot. A member of the original project team, Geof Auchinleck, told his story to Kurt Brookes. A Made in Manchester production.

The UK’s first official gay Pride march took place 50 years ago – on 1st July 1972. Alex Collins talked to Ted Brown, who took part in the London march.

Transcript

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0:00.0

On the podium season two is available now.

0:02.8

Like many people in this world, I have never seen an Olympic medal before.

0:07.2

Bringing you more remarkable stories of Olympic and Paralympic athletes

0:11.8

and their incredible journeys to the podium.

0:14.5

This is my dream and it came true that day.

0:17.0

Find out more at the end of this podcast.

0:20.0

Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC with me Max Pearson and the team behind the witness history strand on the world service

0:27.8

This week from the 1980s how the murder of Vincent Chin in the US sparked widespread protests.

0:34.3

Asian Americans were largely invisible, were seen as foreign invaders as though we were there

0:42.1

to do harm to America.

0:44.0

Also, the very first bit of robot assisted surgery.

0:47.0

Just for fun, we made a version of a robot that picked up surgical instruments

0:52.0

and passed them to the surgeon on voice demand.

0:55.0

Plus 50 years of gay pride in the UK and surrogate births in India, a procedure that grew into

1:01.2

a multi-million dollar global business.

1:03.5

I could feel the pain of the mother, seeing her daughter not able to carry a child, and in India

1:10.0

we always say that a mother can do anything for her daughter.

1:13.3

That's all coming up later in the podcast.

1:15.4

But we're going to start in Egypt, where just over a decade ago,

1:19.2

the country held its first ever free democratic presidential election. It was one of the defining moments of what we came to know as the Arab Spring.

1:26.8

As Egyptians went to the polls in June 2012, they wondered what would be the outcome of the extraordinary social unrest which saw tens

1:35.3

of thousands of people occupy Tarria Square in the heart of Cairo. What they got was a decidedly

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