Kareem received 1,000 LE at the end of this month, which equals about $200. For a receipt and a confirmation, please contact us.

It’s been over a year and a half now that our friend Kareem has been in prison, merely for standing up in what he believes in. It’s imperative for all of us to continue this struggle! To keep yourself updated on his news and our campaigns for him, please add this widget to your blogs and websites:

Joshua Curry recently wrote this article, where he incorrectly noted:

Iran arrested Kareem Amer for a sophomoric rant against his university and gave him a four-year prison sentence. His lawyers say since then, his teeth have been smashed and he’s beaten regularly.

Iran has nothing to do with Kareem’s case. The government responsible is Egypt’s.

On Monday, April 21, was the official deadline for our letter campaign “Flood the Jail with Mail“. So far, we had about 60 confirmed letters from around the world, but we are assured that it’s not over – some people are getting ready to hold small events where they collect letters for Kareem, so they can send them all together in a big envelope. Our aim is to collect at least 30 letters per event.

People have sent Kareem letters, postcards, pictures, books, etc. We are hoping that he will write back confirming to us that he received all these letters, or at least most of them. But even if the campaign is over now you can continue writing to Kareem. He is always happy to receive letters from his friends and supporters.

We also have in mind to create another campaign of this sort during the end of the summer in August, and in between, we’d have other kinds of campaigns to keep people aware of Kareem. If anyone wants to help out, they should contact editor@freekareem.org and we’d be happy to accept any suggestions or help.

What began as a widespread call for a general strike ended as the police cracked down across the nation, dispatching thousands of riot troops, arresting more than 200 demonstrators and fighting with protesters in the north.

While two schools were burned and more than 150 people were reported injured in the northern town of Mahalla al-Kobra on Sunday, it was the eerie emptiness of the normally teeming streets of Cairo that signaled the depth of discontent with President Hosni Mubarak’s government.

The calls for a strike, which spread quickly across the country mostly by cellphone messages and word of mouth, underscored a new challenge to the government’s monopoly on power: rising public outrage and a growing willingness by workers and professionals to press their demands by striking.

In Cairo, many stores were closed and hundreds of students protested at three universities. Riot police officers massed in the central Tahrir Square and stood in formation outside the lawyers’, doctors’ and journalists’ syndicates. At the lawyers’ syndicate, a few hundred protesters stood on the roof and on a balcony chanting “Down, down, Hosni Mubarak.”

In Mahalla, the center of the nation’s textile industry, riot police fired tear gas at stone-throwing crowds. Angry demonstrators set fire to two schools, a tourism company and a truck carrying subsidized food, officials said.

Read the rest of the article here.

And on Menassat:

The revolution may not be televised – at least not on Egypt’s state-run TV – but you can be sure it will have its group on Facebook. Undeterred by last Sunday’s security crackdown, Egypt’s cyber-dissidents are calling for new anti-government protests on May 4, president Hosni Mubarak’s 80th birthday.

Read more here.

In our previous post, we wrote that the most recent “The World” podcast will feature a discussion about the “Flood the Jail with Mail” campaign which is co-organized by the wonderful and hard working Committee to Protect Bloggers (CPB) This podcast features the director of the Free Kareem Coalition (myself), Curt from CPB, and Elijah Zarwan, a Cairo-based human rights researcher.

You can now listen to the short 4 minute talk here. [MP3]

BBC’s “The World” is going to feature a new podcast concerning the upcoming 2-week long letter campaign for Kareem, detailed by Curt from the Committee to Protect Bloggers here.

Curt and I (Esra’a) will be discussing the Flood the Jail with Mail campaign [click here for info] which goes live on Monday, April 7th. We encourage everyone to get involved!

Visit the website and make sure you listen to Friday’s show to learn more about the campaign and Kareem’s situation in general.