Egypt Jails Blogger
Sign from a protest, via the Free Kareem site
In chilling news, the Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil was sentenced to 4 years for insulting Hosni Mubarak and Islam. He is 22 years old, two years younger than me. Egypt has a terrible human rights record and this doesn’t nothing to improve their image, or the lives of their people. Nabil wrote a normal Blogger blog. Is Hosni and the Egyptian regime really so insecure that they need to put a young blogger in jail? He has been presiding over a stagnation and running in one man elections for years, but now this? Egypt has a history of routine torture, arbitrary detentions and kangaroo courts, but this is an absolutely brazen stamping on free speech. This is not comment moderation, this is real censorship. More to the point, this is bullshit.
As the Times says:
Nabil, who used the blogger name Kareem Amer, had sharply criticized Al-Azhar on his Web log, calling it ”the university of terrorism” and accusing it of suppressing free thought. He also often criticized Mubarak’s regime on the blog.
In one post, he said Al-Azhar University ”stuffs its students’ brains and turns them into human beasts … teaching them that there is not place for differences in this life.”
He was a vocal critic of conservative Muslims and in other posts described Mubarak’s regime as a ”symbol of dictatorship.”
The university threw him out last year and pressed prosecutors to put him on trial.
This is part of a wider crackdown on the nascent (now aborted) democracy movement, which arrested many bloggers. Kareem is the only one to be jailed.
Here’s the Free Kareem website, and his original blog (in Arabic)
This isn’t the first time Egypt has cracked down hard on bloggers – see ‘blogging from prison‘. The New Arab Conversation by Gal Beckerman, that I came across through Poynter Online is another article worth reading in this context. See here
I was reading somewhere that due to the Iraq war and the dependence of the US on the support of Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, the possibility that the US could in some way pressure these countries to democratise and get their act together has significantly diminished. I guess these countries figure they could get away with human rights abuses due to their alignment with Uncle Sam on the war against terror.
Scary stuff…
I hope I’ll never see this in our beloved SL, although Indi you do know that you live in a country that doesn’t have the foggiest notion about what free speech is, don’t you?
Wait… you mean you guys DON’T know what’s going to happen?!
Given that Mahinda Maama doesn’t seem to have any significant opposition, he’s going to be in power for another 12 years. The war is going to be used as an excuse to extend the power of government in a way that infringes on the rights of individuals. Champika Ranawaka has already said that LTTE sympathisers (i.e. any journalist who is not in agreement with the government) should be disposed of extra-judicially. People have already started disappearing… especially journalists. And this is not the first time.
I predict a blogger will disappear one of these days, but his or her death will give kottu.org and the SL blogosphere the publicity it needs to become more influential.
So, basically, the quicker Indi dies the better. The Messiah must die for the good of the whole. It is his destiny.
Oh, machang, can I have your login details so I can redirect indi.ca to ravana, and also monitor kottu.org? Thanks.
kata, kata!
WTF, I just read this. Sri Lanka is nowhere near as bad as Egypt and is very much in the international eye. I don’t think anyone’s getting disappeared here. Least I hope not.
Indi, that post was half in jest, obviously. BUT the long-term presence of the NGOs here is what ensures that Sri Lanka is in the international eye and that Human Rights violations are reported on. Now, we see an increasingly hostile attitude towards NGOs both from the government as well as the public. Also, many NGO workers have not had their work permits renewed, so they’ve had to leave. Sri Lanka maybe not all that bad now, but it used to be worse than Egypt in the late 1980s. It can go back there, if the institutions that prevent it from going back there are weakened. Under this government, those institutions are weakening. Also, as individuals, I think both Ranil and Chandrika had personalities which would tolerate dissent. Mahinda… ooooh…. I don’t think so.
Only “half in jest” ? Not much Metta by the sound of it
Hello, could you help me promote this freedom video as much as you can, if you agree to its contents, of course. It’s about Egypt’s real nature and the accelerating imprisonment of freedom fighters in general, and bloggers like Kareem and many others under severe threats from the Egyptian Government.
Many thanks, Ahmad
Here is the link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbEM6soTHOA