IUF Berlin, who also organized two previous rallies in Germany (rally 2; rally 1 pictures, rally 1 video), assisted us once again with an “undercover” campaign for Kareem.

A grand ball was held at the Interconti Berlin, under the patronage of the Egyptian Ambassador to Germany, Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy. Members of the IUF managed to get into the lobby of the event location and handed out several hundred buttons to the ball guests who entered the hotel. The buttons were pinned to dresses and jackets and read in Arabic: “We are all with Kareem Amer”. In the ballroom, the Egyptian Ambassador along with embassy staff and Egyptian businessmen were able to read this friendly reminder that Kareem is not forgotten by his friends and supporters.

A petition was handed to a guest who entered the ballroom, which could only be accessed by invited guests, with the request to deliver the petition to the Ambassador.

Petition.

Here are the pictures, a video will also be added later.

The entrance to the Interconti Hotel, note the pyramidal shape of the lobby....

Approaching the entrance to the hotel

Entering the lobby

In the lobby

Successfully handing out the first buttons to the guests

Slightly hesitant in pointing out the best spot to pin on the button

The pins

Pin sample

The main ball-room

The dance

A first newspaper report after the ball

A video will be available later!

Kareem’s final appeal today was rejected, and Kareem will be forced to remain in prison until November 2010. That is another 1 full year for Kareem in prison where he risks further torture.

Please do not remain silent. Express your outrage. Help out!

Write to Kareem and let him know he’s not alone in this struggle for free speech and justice.

Please check back in a few days where we will notify you on planned rallies and events.

Kareem must be freed.

A small group of supporters met in front of the Egyptian Embassy, Elfenauweg 61, in Bern, Switzerland, on November 6, 2009 to protest against the imprisonment of Kareem Amer, calling for his release after his third year in prison. Nobody from the Embassy dared to go out and speak with the participants. Only a curtain moved inside the building. The Swiss police on duty was handed an envelope containing a message for the embassador asking for Kareem’s release.

Here are some pictures.

We would like to thank longtime Free Kareem supporter Maryvonne for her assistance, her efforts, courage, and constant willingness to help out. We know that our friend Kareem is extremely appreciative of these efforts which will never go forgotten. Thank you Maryvonne!

Bureaucrash and other liberty activists in Washington, DC will be holding a Free Kareem rally from 12pm – 1pm, November 6th at the following location:

Egyptian Cultural & Educational Bureau

1303 New Hampshire Avenue NW

Washington DC 20036

Map:

View Larger Map

Please join us to show your solidarity for individual liberty and free speech. If you would like to network with people attending the rally please view the following websites:

Facebook Event

Social Bureaucrash

Thank you.

Lee Doren
Bureaucrash

As we reported earlier, the decision of September’s appeal was meant to be announced today. However, it has been postponed until the 22nd of December. In the meantime, Kareem will remain imprisoned despite his innocence.

We are extremely upset by this discouraging news, as his trials are consistently delayed, causing him to remain in prison for much more than he should be, even though he already completed 3/4th of his sentence.

Please tweet this news by using the #FreeKareem tag. Express your outrage at this gross human rights violation. Kareem must be freed!

Recently, about a dozen of Swedish Parliament members sent a letter to the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Kareem.
The Parliament members stated that Kareem “is a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression”. The signatories of the letter, who make up the Parliamentary Human Rights Group, also called for an investigation “into the allegations of ill-treatment” of Kareem in prison, and for the repeal of the provision in Egypt’s penal code that allow for punishment for publishing “offenses”.

We are reprinting this letter with permission:

As we noted a few weeks ago, today was Kareem’s final appeal. The decision of this appeal will be announced on the 20th of October. In the meantime Kareem will continue suffering in his jail cell while the Egyptian government visibily ignores all requests to release him.

This coming November, Kareem will have spent 80% of his sentence time and we are hoping that on the 20th of October they will officially announce his freedom. If not, it marks a new crime committed by the Egyptian government, which continues to abuse its powers at the expense of innocent individuals such as Kareem, whose only crime was practicing his right to freedom of speech on a personal blog.

Please contact your local Egyptian Embassies or Consulates and respectfully demand that Kareem’s release will be secured after years of intentional abuse.

An article mentionning Kareem Amer written by Clément Thiriau was published in Le Petit Journal on July17 2009. (in French) with the title « Malgré la presse privée et d’opposition, l’information reste très contrôlée » (Despite private and opposition press, information remains under tight control).

The article emphasizes the fact that pressures from the state jeopardize the press. Despite the long history of its numerous publications (with more than 500 titles, the most in the region) Egypt appeared in a « difficult situation » as ranking 146th on a list of 173 countries in the last Reporters Without Border classification about freedom of the press. Since january 2009 according to RWB, an average of a complaint a day is registered against a journalist or a blogger.

Though officially unconstitutionnal, censure is raging owing to the state of emergency. The main newspapers are in the hands of friends of the government. Free opposion press and independant press are mostly printed abroad and submitted to the censorship of foreign publications.

Thus internet became the space for freedom of expression. 20% of the Egyptian population is regularly surfing. But since 2007 the net is tightening. The blogger Kareem Amer became the symbol of repression on the Web. A law project is being discussed on creating emprisonnement sentences for « abusive use of internet ». Many bloggers have been arrested following the movements of the 6th of April. Several bloggers have been questionned and/or arrested at Cairo airport.

For the 4th time in a row, Reporters Without Borders has classified Egypt as one of the 12 countries qualified as « internet ennemies».

You can also read the whole report of Reporters without borders here.

Here is its first paragraph:

“The 12 ‘Enemies of the Internet’ – Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam – have all transformed their Internet into an Intranet in order to prevent their population from accessing ‘undesirable’ online information,” Reporters Without Borders said.

On Wednesday, March 18, Omid Reza Mirsayafi became the first blogger to die at the hands of a prison authority. In the wake of Omid’s passing we read with interest a great deal of coverage of the circumstances surrounding his death. One in particular, an essay of remembrance by someone who knew him, was of particular note. However, one statement in the piece brought us up short.

Omid had asked the author to help attract attention to his case. The author consulted with friends who had, she said, more experience with such situations. Those friends counseled against attracting attention to Omid, advising that it would hurt him in the end. The author took that advice.

Anyone who has taken part in free speech activities on behalf of the imprisoned sooner or later, usually sooner, is given just this sort of counsel. Without fail, it comes from those inside larger human rights or governmental organizations and it is hard not to take seriously. After all, these organizations have money, expertise and case officers. Surely they must be correct. We have to confess, however, that when we were first given this counsel, it rubbed us the wrong way, so we spoke with a number of people we knew who had been inside the interrogation rooms and jail cells, people who had previous been where Omid was. And to a person, they said: The more attention, the more coverage, the more pressure, the better.

We subsequently launched Free Mojtaba and Arash Day, the first time the blogosphere had been used to raise awareness of unjust imprisonment of bloggers on a global level. It led to an enormous uptick in awareness of the issue in general and of these two Iranian bloggers specifically. Free Mojtaba and Arash Day was in the top five “memes,” or online topics, that year.

Harassment is the ground state of these places, these interrogation rooms, prison cells and torture chambers, not a result of attention. In fact, that is exactly what the villains who perpetrate these obscenities want you to think.

At the Committee to Protect Bloggers, we have occasionally been contacted by people who knew they were going to have to go in for interrogation and possible arrest. One of them was the Syrian poet and novelist, Ammar Abdulhamid, who has since left Syria to take up a position in Washington, D.C. as a non-resident fellow at the Saban Institute of the Brookings Institution.

“In times of trouble, activists and their families are often told to shy away from publicizing their ordeal,” said Abdulhamid. “They are advised that this is indeed the best way to make it short and to navigate back to safety. In my case, however, international attention eased my way to freedom. Without it, I might not even be alive today. Still, there are no hard-fast rules here, and the best thing that international supporters and sympathizers can do is to follow the wishes of the (effected person), when they can be reached, or the wishes of their family members and/or friends.“

At Free Kareem we have focused on one man as an example of all, Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, also known as Kareem Amer, who, two years ago, was sentenced to four years in prison for critical writing that he posted on his blog.

Kareem Amer occasionally writes letters to a fellow blogger and good friend of ours, noting that the international support is one of the few things that kept him hopeful and sane in these tough times. Every time we received bad news about his case, we rallied hard and we were loud in the media. Shortly after each rally or letter campaign we receive positive remarks about Kareem’s situation, specifically after he has been tortured. So how can we assume that it doesn’t make a difference or that such efforts create a negative one?

We are not claiming that we’re responsible for all positive events that have occurred for Kareem, but we do not want to know where Kareem would be if it were not for the recognition and worldwide support that this campaign helped give him. We are very consistent with our efforts for Kareem and for this reason we know that the Egyptian government is threatened by it, as they have implied many times. We work hard because it apparently makes a great difference for our friend. Many people have asked us to stop. We never did, and Kareem himself wrote to us expressing his gratitude for that. Nothing else is more encouraging and reassuring than his own words asking us to continue for his sake and those like him.

Getting light and attention focused on persecuted bloggers is not like building a grand piano. It’s a simple, if demanding, task. Those who who tell us we must not agitate or the men and women we are trying to protect will be hurt wind up as accidental advocates for the torturers. All that matters is that we listen only to our brothers and sisters inside. If they, or their families, say we need to ease up, then we do. But that has happened to the two of us a collective grand total of one time.

Torturers torture because they love torturing. They do not do it for a reason. And they are far more likely to be stopped by their masters when their masters are in the cross-hairs than when they are left to operate in the dark.