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Three days ago Egyptian blogger and political activist Alaa Abdel Fatah was arrested with ten others who were peacefully demonstrating in support of judicial independence and the release of other demonstrators who had been arrested two weeks previously. Alaa and the others were singled out by the police, beaten, and taken into custody. They have now been officially detained for fifteen days "pending investigation", which status can be renewed indefinitely at the discretion of the state.
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.
Alaa was one of the first to start a blog in Egypt and one of the very few who posts dissident political opinions. He and his wife Manal run an Egyptian blog aggregator from their site, Manal and Alaa's bit bucket. There is good reason to think he was targeted because he is a well-known and outspoken political activist:
Government agents handpicked people to arrest from amongst the protesters. They have been wanting to get Alaa for a long time now, precisely because he is high profile, and because he helps organizes the protests and spread the information through the blog aggregator he runs (www.manalaa.net). With Alaa gone, Aggregator could shut down without his maintenance and other bloggers could get too scared to be active and find no way to organize or reach one other. It's of vital importance that he gets released ASAP.
A Free Alaa! blog has already been launched. Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey is providing frequent updates. Another good source of information is Global Voices, which has several stories from Egypt over the past few days posted here.
An online petition can be signed here.
In an item posted on Monday, Sandmonkey gave this contact information for the Egyptian Embassy:
Embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt
454 Laurier Ave. East
Ottawa, ON K1N 6R3Tel (613) 234-4931
Fax (613) 234-9347
www.egyptembassy.ca
egyptemb@sympatico.ca
I checked the website and it’s a dud, containing only this text: "This is the placeholder for egyptembassy.ca".
I hope that Canadians who support freedom of speech and freedom of non-violent political dissent will communicate their views to the Egyptian Embassy in Ottawa. Free Alaa!
Great write-up!
Geez, you make my posts look like the mutterings of an illiterate baboon.
I really should come by more often.
Thanks, Chris. Your blog is a good one, too.
I think that my writing has improved since I’ve been blogging—well, it’s faster anyway.
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