Tag: Activism

Sandmonkey: random quotes from 25 May demo

Some of them are very touching, and others are very funny. (Especially Josh’s quote about Abdel Kuddous.) Link.

“Tell your foreign friends to get away from here. That it’s not safe for them. That within the next 10 minutes I can’t gurantee their safety”
A plainclothed state-security agent to me

” They say they are not going anywhere. That they are not scared. They have been to Aghanistan and Iraq. You think that you can scare them after that?”
My reply to him

“Loving this country in this day and age is a crime. They have made loving this country a crime. Curse them”
A random guy on the street

“The MB are defintely not showing up!”
“Well, there is Mohamed Abdul Kuddous over there”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t count. He will protest anything!”
Josh from the arabist and me

Cairo 25 May demo: eyewitness account

I just got this email from Hossam el-Hamalawy, who got pepper-sprayed on his face earlier today:

Hi,
 
State Security police arrested today at least two Youth for Change Activists, who’ve been recently released from Tora.
 
Mohamed Sharkawy was leaving the Press Syndicate after attending a demo in support of the judges, in a taxi, when he was stopped by plain clothes security, who grabbed him out of the car. He was beaten and taken away to an unknown location.
 
Another activist, Kareem al-Sha’er, was leaving the syndicate around 4:30pm, in the private car of his colleague Dina Samak–a six-month pregnant journalist with the BBC whose husband Ibarhim el-Sahary is currently incarcerated in Tora for taking part in pro-judges demos–when they were stopped by at least 25 plain clothes security agents, who kept on hitting the car windows till they were smashed, and dragged Karim el-Sha’er out of it. He was beaten and taken to an unknown location. Dina had a trauma shock the bordered on a nervous breakdown. She was taken by her friends to the Judges’ Club.
 
Earlier in the day, (though I don’t have much details), Kefaya coordinator in Qenna, Ashraf Abdel Hafiz, was picked up by State Security.
 
The police had laid siege on the Press Syndicate, with riot troops, plain clothes security officers, and thugs. We were barred from leaving the syndicate to go and join the judges’ stand in front of the High Court, around 1:30pm. When I tried to leave, a plain clothes security officer, dressed in a yellow shirt, pepper-sprayed my face. I couldn’t see well for at least 20 mins, during which my face and neck were on FIRE! I wasn’t allowed to leave the premise for another hour.
 
I’m attaching a pic of the security agent who assaulted me. He’s wearing a yellow shirt, standing behind the helmeted soldiers talking to a CSF colonel in a black hat.
 

May 25 Judges Demo 055A

MediaShift on the Free Alaa movement

Mark Glaser has an interesting article on the web activism around Alaa and the techniques used to attract attention to his cause:

So after Alaa’s detention on May 7, the reaction from the blogosphere and other activists around the globe was swift. They created a multi-faceted campaign to free him and bring attention to his plight in a way that fit with his tech-savvy personality. The Global Voices blog set up a special wiki , which lists all the ways people are promoting his release online and offline. Anyone can edit the wiki to add their own activity or ideas.

So far, there’s been a Flash animation , an online petition (signed by 1,100+ people so far), badges to post on websites and blogs, and a special Wikipedia entry . People have even tried a Google bomb strategy, where they link the Free Alaa blog with the word “Egypt” so that Google searches for Egypt will pull up the blog. It hasn’t worked well so far, but the idea is innovative.

As DemoBlogger points out on the Free Alaa blog: “The total cost of launching a global human rights campaign using digital tools: $0. The total time needed to launch a global human rights campaign using digital tools: 24 hours.”

The article has some great Alaa quotes in it. On the morning he was arrested, I received a long email from Alaa after I’d asked him a technical question a few days beforehand. It was, as usual with Alaa, passionately geeky and impatient with ignorance about technology. It was also, I think, the first PGP-encrypted email I’ve ever received. At the bottom was his signature, which I’ll have to ask him about when he gets out: “Alaa: Husband of the Grand Waragi Master.”