Several friends of Kareem as well as his lawyers attempted to visit him recently but with no success. We are seriously concerned for his safety and demand that the Egyptian government intervenes by ensuring he is at least being treated decently with rights to see and communicate with visitors. We are unaware of whether or not latest letters from his supporters are reaching him, as several of them claim they’ve had no response despite previous communication with Kareem.

It’s bad enough that Egypt has insisted on keeping him imprisoned for the “crime” of practicing free speech on the internet, but the harsh treatment is unacceptable and will surely create further international outrage at the real crime, which is imprisoning and torturing an innocent blogger, a crime that the Egyptian government has refused to correct while toying with a young man’s life.

A great way to help spread the word about Kareem is with this WordPress plugin. It’s extremely convenient and customizable, as you can see from this screenshot of the admin interface.

A lot of people already know about Kareem, but most people don’t. We need to continue spreading the word in order to keep the pressure on the Egyptian government. Please fight the grave injustice of Kareem’s imprisonment by downloading this plugin and placing it on your sidebar.

There are 131 blogs around the world currently using this. Please help us get this up to at least 300!

Kareem’s case is still being used as a primary example of the government-led human rights violations against bloggers and has recently been mentioned in this round-up of other bloggers throughout the MENA region who have been harassed or are still imprisoned:

In 2007, Egyptian writer Kareem Amer was imprisoned for “insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak” on his blog. He is currently serving a four-year sentence at Borg Al-Arab prison outside Alexandria.

Read full article here.

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.

A presentation by FreeKareem.org was done at the re:publica ‘09 event in Berlin. People had overwhelming support for Kareem, and many immediately wanted to know how they can help. Some are doing so by writing letters to either Kareem or the Egyptian government, others are spreading the word about Kareem’s imprisonment.

We appreciate everyone’s support, and thank them for coming to see the presentation and learning how they can help support the campaign.

Photo source.

Despite our efforts to gain their attention and support for Kareem in the past 2 years, the UN has been largely unresponsive. Two years later UN “experts” condemn Kareem’s imprisonment, but where was the UN 2 years ago when we needed them, and why did the UN continue to support and promote Egypt’s place in the Human Rights Council despite knowledge of Kareem’s arrest and other bloggers/activists like him?

From Amnesty:

Experts of the Human Rights Council have concluded that the Egyptian authorities have detained blogger Karim Amer arbitrarily for his online criticisms and for exercising his right to freedom of expression. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) communicated its decision to Amnesty International.

[...]

Karim Amer was sentence in 2007 to four years in prison for writing on his blog criticizing Egypt’s al-Azhar religious authorities and President Mubarak. Charges against him include “spreading information disruptive of public order and damaging to the country’s reputation”, “incitement to hate Islam” and “defaming the President of the Republic”.

Read full release.

This is the video we created two years ago opposing Egypt’s inclusion in the Human Rights Council:

Twitter is very quickly emerging to be the primary tool for quick and effective communication across the world. It’s a great tool to use for awareness. The unfortunate thing about Twitter is that it’s so easy to get lost in the meaningless madness, where the majority give mindless updates on absolutely everything and anything that they do, that important tweets get overshadowed within seconds. This has made it harder for us to commit to Twitter and using it to help people learn more about Kareem and how they can keep by making others aware about his situation.

Now we finally have support in this with a service called Tweetizen, which allows you to create Twitter groups and will soon enable an embedding feature where you can embed it on the site, either as a widget or a page, which is great!

We have jumped at this early opportunity and created a group on Tweetizen where you can keep up with what people are saying about Kareem or the Free Kareem Campaign.

Here’s an example of what it looks like:

If you use Twitter, we hope that you will follow us @freekareem, and help by retweeting (RT) some of our posts.

Egyptian blogger “Wa7da Masrya” received another letter from Kareem, stating:

I got a letter from Kareem today. He is fine and again would like to thank everyone for what they are doing to help free him. He’s waiting for the day he’d be released from prison and hopes that by next November, when he’d have spent the majority of his time in prison, the government may be able to release him. He is hopeful.

Kareem writes:

Prison has become a part of my imagination. I don’t remember how life was before my imprisonment and how people look like outside.

Shahinaz, Kareem’s friend and one of his frequent visitors, adds:

I wrote to him and reassured him that we are all supporting him and we’ll continue our campaign to protect him during his detention.

Any requests to free Kareem has been refused despite other prisoners being discharged.

Please write to him and express your support and solidarity.

Egyptian blogger “Wa7da Masrya” received a letter from Kareem a few days ago stating that he’s doing fine for the time being, despite feeling frustrated and lonely. Fortunately his situation has improved now that the prison guards and the prison’s administration are aware of the trouble that would ensue should they harm and torture him as they did last year. “Activists and Kareem’s lawyers are keeping eyes on him,” she noted.

In a brief e-mail to us she went on to add:

In his letter, I could sense that he’s frustrated and afraid. He asked me, ‘do you think that outside of this prison would be better than it is here, or would it be even more hell?’

He is feeling very lonely, he needs more moral support, and to be reassured that when he will be released, he would be safe, since he’s now known as an atheist.

He also thanked everyone who is fighting for his freedom and wishes that all supporters would continue. So please do!

We have recently launched a WordPress plugin for Kareem. It has been in the works for some time, but we’re back now with a great update. In the previous post we noted that we were already working on introducing new features to improve the plugin/widget, these are now completed and you can download the latest from the official WordPress plugin directory.

What’s different from last time:

Previously you had no specific options. You had to use the widget as it came. However with the latest version, this is no longer the case. Whether you would like to show only Kareem’s photo and the feed from FreeKareem.org, or only a video and the social networking links, or simply an alert and a count-up of his time in prison, or a “tell a friend” e-mail option to increase awareness, or anything in between – this plugin allows you to choose whichever you prefer to show on your sidebar.

Take a look:

FAQ:

How do I customize it?
After you download and upload the plugin to your WordPress site (see “Installation“), go to “Settings” and proceed to the Free Kareem tab. Tick whatever option you would like your widget to include, and untick whatever you wish to eliminate. All the buttons are ticked by default, but this is just to show you the options before you begin customizing it depending on your needs.

Is it compatible with WordPress 2.7?
Yes. It is compatible with every version of WordPress since 2.0 and we’ll continue making it compatible with future releases of WordPress as well.

Does this plugin come in different languages?
Yes, very soon. Thanks to the outstanding support of volunteers we are currently working on launching this plugin in different languages. If you would like to translate this plugin, please let us know.

Here’s just an example of a customized WordPress widget:

Download the plugin here! And please spread the good word. This is a great way to spread awareness on Kareem’s situation.