Everyone has right to freedom of opinion and expressions; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.--- Article 19 ,
Abdel Fattah Murad, Kareem Amer,and ‘freedom of expression’ in Egypt
Sami Ben Gharbia writes: On February 22, the Egyptian court sentenced the 22-year-old blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman (aka Kareem Amer) to four years in prison for insulting Islam , inciting hatred of Islam in comments criticising the government’s authoritarian and religious excesses and criticising the president Hosni Mubarak and Islamist control of the country’s universities on his personal blog posts.
Egypt’s decision to sentence 23-year old blogger Kareem Amer to prison in February sparked a fury among the civil society and attracted much unwanted attention from international media. A critic of both the leading Islamic institution al-Azhar and the Egyptian government, Amer was sentenced to a four-year prison sentence for insulting Islam and President Mubarak on his blog. The case marks the first time Egypt refers a blogger to a prison term.
Amer’s lawyer Gamal Eid, who is also the director of the Cairo-based non-governmental
organization, The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRInfo), stressed that “Kareem crossed the line by criticizing Islam, the President, and the Al-Azhar institution.”
Abdel Hadi suggested that the regime might have sought to “protect its legitimacy” by sentencing Amer, thus “demonstrating that they are tough on those criticizing religion.”
When combined with public activism, blogging is a particularly dangerous activity, according to Eid. In April, security officials at Cairo airport arrested Brotherhood-affiliated journalist and blogger Abdel Moneim Mahmoud as he attempted to travel to Sudan to do reporting on human rights in the Arab world.
Furthermore, on the March 12, Judge Abdel Fattah Mourad, head of the Alexandria Appeal Court, upheld Kareem’s four-year prison sentence and prepared to launch a lawsuit to block 21 blogs and websites for “defaming Egypt’s image and insulting the president.”
Hossam el-Hamalawy republished on his blog the following message from blogger Amr Gharbeia: The list, 21-websites-long, includes the blogs and sites that took part in the discussion around the book the Judge has written, and the wide plagiarism evident in the book copying HRInfo’s report on Internet Freedoms in the Arab World, and a how-to-blog guide written by blogger Bent Masreya. Of the 21 blogs and website, I was able so far to confirm Kifaya’s and HRInfo’s websites, in addition to the blogs of Bent Masreya, Yehia Megahed, and my own.
However, and despite the power and the unity that characterize the Egyptian blogshpere, many believe that the Egyptian regime, using the stratagem of sowing discord by condemning Kareem Amer, has succeeded in dividing Egyptian bloggers into two camps:
the Islamists, who criticize the way Kareem was writing about Islam and Muslims and, in a way, support his condemnation; and the liberals, who are defending Kareem’s rights and campaigning for his release. According to Elijah Zarwan, a Cairo-based researcher for Human Rights Watch, “many of the people who defended Kareem in the Egyptian blogosphere strenuously objected, publicly or privately, to some of his writings. But they still defended his right to express his views. In any case, as the Egyptian blogosphere grows, it is becoming more reflective of the diversity and pluralism of Egypt itself. Kareem didn’t divide the blogosphere. It wasn’t unified to begin with.”
Government repression no longer ignores bloggers .The Internet is occupying more and more space in the breakdown of press freedom violations. Several countries fell in the ranking this year because of serious, repeated violations of the free flow of online news and information.
In Malaysia (124th), Thailand (135th), Vietnam (162nd) and Egypt (146th), for example, bloggers were arrested and news websites were closed or made inaccessible. “We are concerned about the increase in cases of online censorship,” Reporters Without Borders said. “More and more governments have realised that the Internet can play a key role in the fight for democracy and they are establishing new methods of censoring it. The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media.”
China maintains its leadership in this form of repression, with a total of 50 cyber-dissidents in prison. Eight are being held in Vietnam.
Egyptian bloggers, often at the forefront of exposing human rights abuses, are planning an online festival of torture videos to run alongside the 31st Cairo Film Festival, from 27 November to 7 December.
According to the “Middle East Times”, the parallel festival is the invention of a blogger named Walid, and will feature “controversial acts of torture allegedly committed by the security authorities.” Prizes, including a “Golden Whip”, will be awarded to the best entrants. Egypt’s bloggers have exposed many incidents of police torture. In a rare case of security forces being sentenced for abusing detainees, two policemen got three years in jail for torturing a man in their custody earlier this month. Footage of the abuse filmed with a mobile phone was widely distributed on YouTube and sparked nationwide and international outrage.
But bloggers who are critical of the government can also find themselves as victims. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer, who is serving a four-year jail term for insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak, has recently been tortured while in custody, reports the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRInfo). Amer, the first blogger to stand trial in Egypt for his Internet postings, has three more years left in his sentence.
Reporters Without Borders strongly condemned the arrest of journalist Hossam el-Hendy at Helwan University, south of Cairo, as “an attempt to intimate all bloggers in Egypt” after officials there reported him to police for taking photos and sending messages about a demonstration on his mobile phone.
El-Hendy, 22, who works for the daily paper Al-Dustour and the website Eshreen (www.20at.com ), was covering a 28 November protest that erupted when a speaker at a university conference on information technology said it was important to regulate online activity in Egypt. The press freedom organisation also deplored the suspension on 21 November of the YouTube account of journalist and blogger Wael Abbas, who had posted scenes of police brutality towards suspects, and of his Yahoo! E-mail account on 29 November.
“Abbas is seen by the country’s bloggers as a key figure who alerts Egyptians to acts of torture,” it said. “If some of his clips are too shocking, YouTube can ask him to remove them, but suspending his account is excessive.” Abbas has suggested a parallel event to the Cairo Film Festival that would award a “golden whip” to the video of the worst example of police torture.
Egypt is on the Reporters Without Borders list of “enemies of Internet freedom.”
One blogger, Kareem Amer, 22, is in prison for posting material online and has become a symbol of repression towards the country’s bloggers.
Reporters Without Borders hails the decision taken by the administrative court of Egypt’s state council on 29 December ’07 not to block access to 51 websites which judge Abdel Fattah Murad, the head of the Alexandria court, had accused of defaming and attacking the president.
“The real reason Murad wanted to block these sites was their reference to the charge of
‘intellectual dishonesty’ made against him last February. This ruling raises our hopes about respect for free speech on the Egyptian Internet and we would like to think that similar ones will follow, for example, in the case of Kareem Amer, a young blogger who has been imprisoned for criticising the president and others.”
A total of 21 sites, including Baheyya and Gharbeia, two popular blogs, and the site of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, were initially accused of attacking the president by Judge Murad on 11 March, after allegations circulated on the blogosphere that a book by the judge on the Internet’s legal challenges had been plagiarised. The judge subsequently added another 30 websites to his complaint.
The administrative court ruled that the sites were just content hosts and, as such, not responsible for the comments that might be posted on them. Judge Ahmed Hassaan, the head of the administrative court, refused to block the sites and denied that they had violated the constitution, as Murad had claimed.
The ruling has been hailed as “historic” by the Egyptian blogosphere. Gamal Eid, the head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, said he was “delighted” by the decision. It presaged a “return to normal” for the Egyptian Internet and recognised “the right of Egyptian citizens to have access to a free network,” he said.
Egypt is one of the world’s most repressive countries as regards online activity. Two bloggers were arrested in 2007, including Kareem Amer.
Alexandra Sandels, a Cairo-based Swedish journalist, writes about the growing lack of press freedom in Egypt for Menassat: Despite the freedom of expression boundaries being pushed by the independent press and the blogging community, 2007 witnessed an upsurge in clampdowns on the press and free speech in Egypt.
Source: Menassat, Reporters Without Borders, International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), Worldwide Press Freedom, The Committee to Protect Bloggers,
http://www.freekareem.org/category/egyptian-blogosphere/
http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/
http://freekareem.org/
Abdel Fattah Murad, Kareem Amer,and ‘freedom of expression’ in Egypt
Sami Ben Gharbia writes: On February 22, the Egyptian court sentenced the 22-year-old blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman (aka Kareem Amer) to four years in prison for insulting Islam , inciting hatred of Islam in comments criticising the government’s authoritarian and religious excesses and criticising the president Hosni Mubarak and Islamist control of the country’s universities on his personal blog posts.
Egypt’s decision to sentence 23-year old blogger Kareem Amer to prison in February sparked a fury among the civil society and attracted much unwanted attention from international media. A critic of both the leading Islamic institution al-Azhar and the Egyptian government, Amer was sentenced to a four-year prison sentence for insulting Islam and President Mubarak on his blog. The case marks the first time Egypt refers a blogger to a prison term.
Amer’s lawyer Gamal Eid, who is also the director of the Cairo-based non-governmental
organization, The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRInfo), stressed that “Kareem crossed the line by criticizing Islam, the President, and the Al-Azhar institution.”
Abdel Hadi suggested that the regime might have sought to “protect its legitimacy” by sentencing Amer, thus “demonstrating that they are tough on those criticizing religion.”
When combined with public activism, blogging is a particularly dangerous activity, according to Eid. In April, security officials at Cairo airport arrested Brotherhood-affiliated journalist and blogger Abdel Moneim Mahmoud as he attempted to travel to Sudan to do reporting on human rights in the Arab world.
Furthermore, on the March 12, Judge Abdel Fattah Mourad, head of the Alexandria Appeal Court, upheld Kareem’s four-year prison sentence and prepared to launch a lawsuit to block 21 blogs and websites for “defaming Egypt’s image and insulting the president.”
Hossam el-Hamalawy republished on his blog the following message from blogger Amr Gharbeia: The list, 21-websites-long, includes the blogs and sites that took part in the discussion around the book the Judge has written, and the wide plagiarism evident in the book copying HRInfo’s report on Internet Freedoms in the Arab World, and a how-to-blog guide written by blogger Bent Masreya. Of the 21 blogs and website, I was able so far to confirm Kifaya’s and HRInfo’s websites, in addition to the blogs of Bent Masreya, Yehia Megahed, and my own.
However, and despite the power and the unity that characterize the Egyptian blogshpere, many believe that the Egyptian regime, using the stratagem of sowing discord by condemning Kareem Amer, has succeeded in dividing Egyptian bloggers into two camps:
the Islamists, who criticize the way Kareem was writing about Islam and Muslims and, in a way, support his condemnation; and the liberals, who are defending Kareem’s rights and campaigning for his release. According to Elijah Zarwan, a Cairo-based researcher for Human Rights Watch, “many of the people who defended Kareem in the Egyptian blogosphere strenuously objected, publicly or privately, to some of his writings. But they still defended his right to express his views. In any case, as the Egyptian blogosphere grows, it is becoming more reflective of the diversity and pluralism of Egypt itself. Kareem didn’t divide the blogosphere. It wasn’t unified to begin with.”
Government repression no longer ignores bloggers .The Internet is occupying more and more space in the breakdown of press freedom violations. Several countries fell in the ranking this year because of serious, repeated violations of the free flow of online news and information.
In Malaysia (124th), Thailand (135th), Vietnam (162nd) and Egypt (146th), for example, bloggers were arrested and news websites were closed or made inaccessible. “We are concerned about the increase in cases of online censorship,” Reporters Without Borders said. “More and more governments have realised that the Internet can play a key role in the fight for democracy and they are establishing new methods of censoring it. The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media.”
China maintains its leadership in this form of repression, with a total of 50 cyber-dissidents in prison. Eight are being held in Vietnam.
Egyptian bloggers, often at the forefront of exposing human rights abuses, are planning an online festival of torture videos to run alongside the 31st Cairo Film Festival, from 27 November to 7 December.
According to the “Middle East Times”, the parallel festival is the invention of a blogger named Walid, and will feature “controversial acts of torture allegedly committed by the security authorities.” Prizes, including a “Golden Whip”, will be awarded to the best entrants. Egypt’s bloggers have exposed many incidents of police torture. In a rare case of security forces being sentenced for abusing detainees, two policemen got three years in jail for torturing a man in their custody earlier this month. Footage of the abuse filmed with a mobile phone was widely distributed on YouTube and sparked nationwide and international outrage.
But bloggers who are critical of the government can also find themselves as victims. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer, who is serving a four-year jail term for insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak, has recently been tortured while in custody, reports the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRInfo). Amer, the first blogger to stand trial in Egypt for his Internet postings, has three more years left in his sentence.
Reporters Without Borders strongly condemned the arrest of journalist Hossam el-Hendy at Helwan University, south of Cairo, as “an attempt to intimate all bloggers in Egypt” after officials there reported him to police for taking photos and sending messages about a demonstration on his mobile phone.
El-Hendy, 22, who works for the daily paper Al-Dustour and the website Eshreen (www.20at.com ), was covering a 28 November protest that erupted when a speaker at a university conference on information technology said it was important to regulate online activity in Egypt. The press freedom organisation also deplored the suspension on 21 November of the YouTube account of journalist and blogger Wael Abbas, who had posted scenes of police brutality towards suspects, and of his Yahoo! E-mail account on 29 November.
“Abbas is seen by the country’s bloggers as a key figure who alerts Egyptians to acts of torture,” it said. “If some of his clips are too shocking, YouTube can ask him to remove them, but suspending his account is excessive.” Abbas has suggested a parallel event to the Cairo Film Festival that would award a “golden whip” to the video of the worst example of police torture.
Egypt is on the Reporters Without Borders list of “enemies of Internet freedom.”
One blogger, Kareem Amer, 22, is in prison for posting material online and has become a symbol of repression towards the country’s bloggers.
Reporters Without Borders hails the decision taken by the administrative court of Egypt’s state council on 29 December ’07 not to block access to 51 websites which judge Abdel Fattah Murad, the head of the Alexandria court, had accused of defaming and attacking the president.
“The real reason Murad wanted to block these sites was their reference to the charge of
‘intellectual dishonesty’ made against him last February. This ruling raises our hopes about respect for free speech on the Egyptian Internet and we would like to think that similar ones will follow, for example, in the case of Kareem Amer, a young blogger who has been imprisoned for criticising the president and others.”
A total of 21 sites, including Baheyya and Gharbeia, two popular blogs, and the site of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, were initially accused of attacking the president by Judge Murad on 11 March, after allegations circulated on the blogosphere that a book by the judge on the Internet’s legal challenges had been plagiarised. The judge subsequently added another 30 websites to his complaint.
The administrative court ruled that the sites were just content hosts and, as such, not responsible for the comments that might be posted on them. Judge Ahmed Hassaan, the head of the administrative court, refused to block the sites and denied that they had violated the constitution, as Murad had claimed.
The ruling has been hailed as “historic” by the Egyptian blogosphere. Gamal Eid, the head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, said he was “delighted” by the decision. It presaged a “return to normal” for the Egyptian Internet and recognised “the right of Egyptian citizens to have access to a free network,” he said.
Egypt is one of the world’s most repressive countries as regards online activity. Two bloggers were arrested in 2007, including Kareem Amer.
Alexandra Sandels, a Cairo-based Swedish journalist, writes about the growing lack of press freedom in Egypt for Menassat: Despite the freedom of expression boundaries being pushed by the independent press and the blogging community, 2007 witnessed an upsurge in clampdowns on the press and free speech in Egypt.
Source: Menassat, Reporters Without Borders, International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), Worldwide Press Freedom, The Committee to Protect Bloggers,
http://www.freekareem.org/category/egyptian-blogosphere/
http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/
http://freekareem.org/
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If you find any news/information is incorrect/wrong then please bring it to our knowledge for immediate correction, we express our unwilling ignorance and ready to make information correct. email : rawfoundation@ymail.com Please visit us
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