Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Help Egypt See The Light

As you may have heard by now, Egyptian Blogger Alaa Abdel Fatah has been arrested alongside 10 others while demonstrating in support of the independence of the Judiciary in Egypt and the release of previous demonstrators who were detained 2 weeks earlier. The Police entrapped them, cordoning off their peaceful protest and then proceeded to handpick the demonstrators that they wanted to detain, beat them, and then arrested them.

Alaa and those arrested with him are now arrested for 15 days "pending investigation", which could be renewed indefinitely if the state so wishes. He and the men were sent to the infamous Torah Prison and the girls to the Qanatir prison for the duration. This makes them hardly safe, because stuff that goes on in Egyptian prisons on the hands of the jailors: beatings, sexual assaults, torture of all kinds.

Currently there are about 48 detained, 6 of them are bloggers, and 3 of them are women. The best known is Alaa, which makes him the posterboy of this campaign - but getting them out is equally as important. Egypt has fewer than 830 bloggers all in all, 60 of whom are political and less than 30 are politically active. Now 6 of those are in jail - 20% of all politically active Egyptian bloggers - and amongst them one of Egypt's most highly profiled one.
Alaa is an Egyptian blogger, a rare breed indeed. He's spoken out against Mubarak and the repressive government there, and the government has finally clamped down on him - hard.

Unlike the numbnuts in the US who think that we're fascists, totalitarian, and squelch dissent, Alaa lives in a country where that government regularly stomps out dissent. We need to continue to send messages to those countries that infringe on the inalienable right to speech that their behavior cannot be tolerated. That means continuing to speak out against China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and all the other countries that do not permit basic human rights and treat their citizens like dirt.

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