Meklit Hadero, an Ethiopian-born musician and 2009 TEDGlobal Fellow, sings a very moving song in support of Kareem:
Thank you so much Meklit! If you’re on Twitter, please take a moment to send a personal shout out to Meklit @meklithadero for joining the struggle to free Kareem Amer.
Xaq Fixx of Bureaucrash, “a non-profit organization that facilitates freedom-oriented activism,” recently conducted this podcast with me about Kareem, the Free Kareem Campaign, and free speech in the Arab world. Bureaucrash members provided a lot of support for the campaign and have helped us organize several rallies for Kareem in the past two years in Washington D.C and Romania. We are grateful for their support and thank them for this podcast opportunity!
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.
Curt from the Committee to Protect Bloggers has made an appearance in The World’s latest technology podcast, and mentions Kareem’s case:
We have written many times about Shahinaz, or “Wa7da Masrya”, an Egyptian blogger and human rights activist whose efforts are unmatchable.
Shahinaz has contributed greatly to the Free Kareem campaign, giving us reports on his trials and after his official sentence, she was mainly delivering to us letters that Kareem wrote to her. She also made a couple of visits to Kareem to see how he is and to assure him that the fight for his freedom will continue. You may read such posts here:
- Fellow Egyptian blogger visits Kareem in prison
- Latest letter from Kareem in prison
- Latest visit to Kareem in prison
Global Voices Online recently conducted an excellent podcast with Shahinaz, where Kareem’s case and her visits to Kareem were also mentioned. Please listen to it here:
Interview with Wahda Masrya – An Egyptian Girl
There’s also a recent interview with her in French here.
The Free Kareem Coalition is honored to work with Shahinaz, who helped us overcome some of the biggest challenges in the campaign and helped us build a stronger network of supportive individuals. Her support is noted and is much appreciated!
The following podcast features Tom Palmer who expresses his concerns for Kareem, explains the significance of the case and urges people to take action. Please listen to it.
National Public Radio (NPR) is a US-based membership organization of public radio stations that serves over 26 million Americans a week.
Xeni Jarden from NPR News has produced a report that was aired on the nationally-syndicated newsmagazine Day to Day. On the six-minute segment, she interviewed:
- Our New York Coordinator, Constantino Diaz-Duran;
- Egypt’s Ambassador to the US, Nabil Fahmy;
- Egyptian blogger Alaa Abd El-Fattah; and
- Lawrence Wright, a writer for The New Yorker magazine and author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.
NPR warns: “This report contains some graphic audio, which some listeners may find disturbing.”
Click here to download the NPR podcast.
You can also read Xeni’s report at the NPR Web site: Supporters Work to Free Egyptian Blogger.
(Visit that page to also access the segment using streaming audio on RealPlayer or Windows Media Player).
Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, or “Kareem Amer,” was convicted of violating the same legal provisions he criticized on his personal blog.
Three people stand with signs outside Egyptian embassy in Washington, D.C. FreeKareem.orgExactly one month ago, a 22-year-old law student was sentenced to four years in prison for what he wrote on his personal Web site. The case of Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, or “Kareem Amer,” as he is known in the blogosphere, has shed a spotlight on a growing community of bloggers in Egypt, and on the country’s laws concerning online speech.
A translation from Kareem’s final blog post in October reads, “The mere existence of legal provisions that criminalize freedom of thought, and threaten with imprisonment anyone who criticizes religion in any way, is a grave defect in the law.”
Two days after he posted those words, he was interrogated by Egyptian police. Eventually, he was convicted of violating the same legal provisions he criticized on his personal blog.
A court convicted him of contempt of religion, specifically Islam, and of defaming President Hosni Mubarak. Though this is the first time a blogger in Egypt has been convicted by a court for blogging, Egyptian bloggers say free speech and political activists are often arrested and detained.
Cairo-based Alaa Abdel Fattah spent a month and a half in jail last year for protesting injustice in Egypt’s legal system. Last week, Egyptian authorities targeted him again, producing a list of opposition activists that included him and other bloggers.
At a protest days later, police arrested and jailed 20 people for two days, including some of the bloggers on that list.
Another blogger targeted for spreading what the government called “false news” posted a video of alleged torture and rape in an Egyptian prison.
This and other videos documenting alleged human rights abuses have made Egyptian bloggers a subject of attention. Wael Abbas, the blogger who posted a copy of that torture video, reportedly also has a warrant out for his arrest.
Blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah says he wasn’t tortured during his 47 days in jail last year, but knows others who have been.
Egyptian activist and blogger Mohammed el-Sharkawi, 24, was tortured and sodomized “using a rolled up piece of cardboard for nearly 15 minutes” according to his lawyer, Gamal Eid. Human rights groups say Egyptian authorities have yet to investigate or prosecute the police officers accused.
Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, says torture is rampant in Egypt’s jails.
“We need to be much more universal in our condemnation of torture in Egypt,” Wright says.
He argues that the United States should also support due process and humane treatment for Islamist prisoners, not just reformist bloggers like Kareem.“There’s a greater risk in not advocating for those values for both sides. The Islamists in prison in Egypt pose a real threat when they get out,” Wright says. “If we advocate for their rights, if not for their cause, we stand a better chance of having some kind of understanding.”
Nabil Fahmy, Egyptian ambassador to the United States, believes much progress has been made on social and political reforms. How Egypt’s government and society go forward in dealing with bloggers, he admits, still remains a question mark.Meanwhile, a coalition of Kareem’s supporters are campaigning for his release, including organizing protests at Egyptian embassies around the world. Coordinator Constantino Diaz-Duran in New York says that Kareem’s family has disowned him, so the coalition plans to provide some of the necessities that prisoners in Egypt generally depend on families to provide: medicine, clothing and food.
Kareem’s father has said that he would like to see Islamic Sharia law applied. This would give Kareem three days to repent, or face execution. As dire that sounds, this may be one of his last remaining options. On Monday, an Egyptian court rejected an appeal for Kareem’s release, a move the U.S. State Department has condemned.
You can also read the report at Boing Boing.
At Pajamas Media’s Blog Week In Review: The Horse Race, Glenn Reynolds and Katy Wright engage in an interesting discussion on the plight of Kareem Amer. They also talk about what his imprisonment can mean for the future of Internet freedom, as well as freedom of speech in general, in the Middle East. (Hat tip: Layla Gonzalez.)
Fast-forward to 16:50 to listen to their nine-minute discussion on Kareem:
Download MP3 (or visit PJM’s Blog Week In Review to just listen).
Layla Gonzalez, a political freelance writer and the founder of The Hill Chronicles, will be hosting our New York City Coordinator, Constantino Diaz-Duran, tomorrow on her 60-minute radio show.
We encourage you all to tune in. They will be discussing the fate of Kareem Amer, and Layla will also be taking phone calls: (646) 652-4659
When: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 @ 11:00 AM EST (4 PM GMT)
Where: BlowOut with Constantino Diaz-Duran – Free Kareem Jailed Egyptian Blogger
UPDATE (Feb 28, 2007):
You can listen to the show here:
We thank Layla and Constantino for the wonderful show! We are expecting Constantino to be on Layla’s show again in about 6-8 weeks.
