Bridget Johnson, a consultant for the Free Kareem campaign, writes another fantastic article on World Press Freedom Day: When bloggers are silenced, the world must speak for them.
“It causes us to cry, be grieved, and be struck with frustration to find ourselves threatened with death,” he wrote on May 7, 2006, after escaping 20 fellow students wielding knives, leather belts and sticks who had surrounded his taxi outside the university. “Not because we kill. Not because we loot others’ property. Not because we transgress the limits of our freedom. But because we think!” In February, Soliman was sentenced to three years in prison for “insulting Islam” and one year for insulting President Hosni Mubarak. “I shall not recant, not even by an inch, from any word I have written,” read Soliman’s last blog post before his Nov. 6 arrest, when authorities were closing in. “These restrictions will not preclude my dream of obtaining my freedom.”
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As we mark World Press Freedom Day on Thursday, we unfortunately see that the United Nations body tasked with protecting rights — the Human Rights Council — has taken a giant step backward. On March 30, it passed a resolution urging the world to ban public defamation of religion, specifically Islam, thereby encouraging use of a charge under which Soliman was convicted. The council has passively allowed oppressive nations to stifle free speech and must change course or lose all credibility.
Council members that currently hold cyber dissidents in prison — China and Tunisia — should be removed from the panel. In addition, the U.N. should turn down Egypt’s offer to host the Internet Governance Forum in 2009.
Freedom-loving nations around the world must support these bloggers both in one-on-one dealings with offending nations and by turning up the pressure within international bodies. Arab League members — all of them — must pledge to respect free expression.
Please lobby against Egypt’s inclusion in the IGF by contacting Nitin Desai, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Adviser for Internet Governance:
United Nations
Secretariat of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
Palais des Nations, CH-1211 Geneva 10
Swiss Confederation
Tel: +41 22 917 57 59
Fax: +41 22 917 00 92
E-mail: igf AT unog DOT ch
