In a cramped jail cell in Alexandria, Egypt, sits a soft-spoken 22-year-old student. Kareem Amer was remanded to over a month in prison for allegedly “defaming the President of Egypt” and “highlighting inappropriate aspects that harm the reputation of Egypt.” Where did Amer commit these supposed felonies? On his weblog.
If the Alexandria prosecutors’ standards of censorship were applied in the US, thousands of Americans would be behind bars. The Egyptian authorities’ decision to jail an obscure student for his blogposts reveals a larger struggle for free speech playing out between dissident bloggers and state prosecutors across the Middle East.
For decades, the region’s dictators maintained a monopoly on public information. Newspapers, radio stations, and national television broadcasts were nearly all owned by the state. These regime-controlled media outlets toed the government line, maligned political opponents, and blocked critical voices. By inverting the watchdog role of the press – where journalists expose, investigate, and question – what should be a critical independent institution was instead transformed into a mouthpiece for government propaganda.
The advent of blogs in the past few years, however, has reshaped the playing field. While some regimes (like Algeria) may still own the main printing presses and control the national supply of ink, any citizen can access free blogging services. Now an individual’s voice – even that of a random student at Al-Azhar University, like Kareem Amer – can reach audiences around the globe.
Regimes accustomed to control have struggled to respond. In Tunisia, web publisher Zouhair Yahyaoui was dragged from an Internet café by security forces and tortured into revealing his site’s password after he posted a quiz mocking President Zinedine Ben Ali. In Bahrain, the Information Ministry blocked the blog of entrepreneur Mahmoud Al-Yousif for covering a political scandal. In Iran, authorities arrested student Mojtaba Saminejad after he condemned the arrest of several fellow bloggers and “insulted the Supreme Leader.”
Protecting free speech in the Middle East hinges on the fate of young activists like Kareem Amer. Raised in a strict Islamic household, Amer was placed in Al-Azhar’s religious school system at the age of six and watched as his sisters were forced to quit school and wear the niqab (the full-body black veil). After 18 years in the rigid world of the Al Azhar system, Amer evidently felt trapped. Rather than embrace the religious establishment, he became a critic of discrimination against women and non-Muslims.
Blogging became Amer’s outlet – and his downfall. When Al-Azhar officials discovered a blogpost criticizing extremist professors, Amer was expelled and his case referred to the public prosecutor.
Although a human rights lawyer accompanied Amer to his interrogation, prosecutors made clear they were indicting Amer for his beliefs. “Do you fast on Ramadan?” they demanded. “Do you pray?” They even insisted he reveal his opinions on the Darfur crisis. Amer would not retract his blogposts, so prosecutors threw him in jail – and laughed at the human rights attorney present, openly mocking the concept of standing up for individual rights.
Only a few years ago, the arrest of a student at Al-Azhar would have been met with silence and indifference from the outside world. But today, hundreds of fellow bloggers and readers from around the world have raised the alarm. Over 1,500 have sent letters to the Egyptian government and the State Department demanding Amer’s release. The technology that has empowered unknown students in closed societies to speak to the world also gives readers everywhere the ability to rally together to protect free expression.
It also enabled Amer to smuggle blogposts out from his Alexandria cell. “A person using his brain and expressing his ideas freely,” he observed, “is more dangerous in our country than someone who destroys others’ property or deals drugs.”
Amer’s arrest – for writing on a website few people have ever read – comes as the future of the Middle East hangs in the balance. While recent years have witnessed a surge in young voices challenging the status quo, powerful forces are trying to close down that window of greater liberty. In the campaign to hold Egyptian authorities accountable for criminalizing free speech, much more than the fate of one young blogger is at stake.
Dalia Ziada is a staffer at the Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information. Jesse Sage directs the HAMSA project of the American Islamic Congress.
Julie Stahl writes:
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) – Watchdog groups are pressing for the release of an Egyptian blogger, arrested last month for posting articles critical of Islam on his Web log (blog).
They say Abdel Karim Nabil Suleiman, 22, is a victim of Egyptian attempts to limit freedom of expression on the Internet.
Suleiman, known by his Internet pseudonym Kareem Amer, was expelled from the Al-Azhar University earlier this year because he wrote critically about the role of religion in Egypt, the Middle East Media Research Institute reported on Thursday.
(Al-Azhar is the regarded as the highest Sunni Islamic learning institution in the region. The grand imam of al-Azhar mosque, Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, is one of the most senior Muslim clerics in Egypt.)
Suleiman also was arrested last year when he condemned violent Muslim reaction to a Coptic Christian play, which some Muslims considered offensive to Islam.
The Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and the Egyptian Observatory for Justice and Law are campaigning for Sulieman’s release. The groups say he’s been imprisoned on “false charges.”
“The real reason for his imprisonment is that he expressed his anti-governmental and anti-Islamic views in his own online articles,” the groups said.
According to the groups, which are providing legal representation for Suleiman, he was supposed to be questioned before a judge on Thursday in the presence of his lawyers, but police misinformed the lawyers about where the interrogation would be held and took Suleiman to a different court, where he was given another 15 days’ detention.
A petition calling for Suleiman’s release has been posted on the HAMSA (Hands Across the Middle East) website. HAMSA is an American Muslim organization that promotes civil rights in the Middle East.
HAMSA Director Jesse Sage said more than 1,500 people have sent emails to the Egyptian government and U.S. State Department demanding Suleiman’s release.
“This is the first time that someone [in Egypt] was arrested for what he wrote on a blog,” said Sage by telephone. Other bloggers have been arrested, but usually for participating in street demonstrations, he said.
In the last article posted before his arrest, Suleiman blasted clerics at Al-Azhar University and predicted he would be arrested for it.
“[To] Al-Azhar University, to the professors and sheikhs at Al-Azhar who stood and stand against anyone who thinks freely, I say: You will end up in the dustbin of history. Then you will find no one to cry for you,” Suleiman wrote according to a translation provided by MEMRI on Thursday.
According to Reporters Without Borders, Egypt is among the 13 countries known for violating freedom of expression on the Internet.
The Washington-based human rights advocacy group Freedom House said that the number of Egyptians with Internet access has more than quadrupled in the last five years but stands at less than six percent of the population.
“The Egyptian government does not engage in widespread online censorship, and online writers regularly criticize the government and launch concerted campaigns for political change,” Freedom House said on its website.
Nevertheless, it said that, “bloggers were arrested, detained without charge, and harassed by state security agents.”
Freedom House mentions Suleiman’s arrest. It also mentions the arrest of online editor Ahmad Abd-Allah, whose papers, books and hard drives were confiscated. According to Abd-Allah, during his interrogation he was pressured to close his website. But later he was released without charges on condition that he maintain contact with state security.
(Thanks to Egypeter for the link.)
Read the full report here.
We would like to correct Spiegel Online in their report about Kareem:
It is well after midnight when Abdel Kareem Sulaiman, 22, gets some uninvited company. Suddenly the door to his apartment bursts open and a squad of Egyptian security police officers storms into the room and arrests the drowsy Sulaiman on the spot.
This is not what happened.
Kareem went to the Prosecution Office with a lawyer, as stated here many times before. Please do not dramatize the situation for whatever purpose, we would like Kareem’s case to remain accurate at all times.
IRIN Middle East: Weekly update of human rights violations in the region:
CAIRO, (IRIN) – In Egypt, Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced the sentencing on 31 October of former President Anwar al-Sadat’s nephew, Talaat al-Sadat, after being convicted by a military court of insulting the military and the Republican Guard.
HRW condemned the conviction of al-Sadat, who is a prominent parliamentarian. Al-Sadat’s prosecution and sentence [sends] a chilling message to anyone who dares to raise sensitive issues in Egypt. No one should be tried in a military court or any other court for criticising a public institution or a public official, said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East Director of the New York-based rights group.
Meanwhile, local NGO Human Rights Info denounced the arrest of a prominent secularist blogger for his views on Egypt’s religious establishment. Alexandrian blogger Abd el-Karim Suleiman, who was arrested on Monday, is being investigated on five charges, which include incitement to hate Islam and spreading malicious rumours that disrupt public security.
We are very concerned that he is going to be charged officially with blasphemy a charge which can carry the death penalty in Egypt, Human Rights Info spokeswoman Dalia Ziada told IRIN.
Constantino Diaz-Duran, thank you so much for this piece.
Free Kareem Amer!
A great injustice is taking place today in a city that was once as cosmopolitan as our dear Manhattan. Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, better known as Kareem Amer, has been detained on and off for a year in Alexandria, Egypt, charged with a series of crimes that include “spreading information disruptive of public order,” “incitement to hate Muslims,” and “defaming the President of the Republic.”
As students at a world-renowned university, we have a platform that allows our voices to be heard. Kareem’s release is just the kind of cause we should use it for. It is morally imperative that Columbia students join in solidarity for this 22-year-old student, whose only real crime has been having the courage to speak his mind while living under a totalitarian government.
Kareem was first arrested on Oct. 26, 2005, following a long (and to some, blasphemous) blog post he wrote after the Maharram Beh Riot, a violent confrontation between Muslims and Coptic Christians. Having witnessed the violence, and what he called the “brutality, inhumanity, and thievery” of some of his fellow Muslims, Kareem wrote, “We should stand courageously and boldly against these teachings.” These are teachings, he continued, “that became a plague on humanity and are not supported except by extremists like [Osama] bin Laden, [Abu Musab] al Zarqawi, [Ayman] al Zawaheeri, and the thugs that assaulted our Coptic brothers, burned their homes, stole their properties, and tried to assault their religious men and destroy their churches.”
After Kareem’s release from jail a couple of weeks later, he seemed even more adamant in his fight: “It is very terrible that freedom would be taken from a human being because of an opinion or belief of his, but … it is very beautiful that his detention would be an encouragement for him to stick by his principles, and a reason for him to defy and hold on to what he thinks is right, even if he violates the traditions and beliefs of the majority of the people within the boundaries of his society.”
The controversy earned him a further honor. He was expelled from Al-Azhar University, one of the Islamic world’s premier higher-learning institutions. He studied law there, hoping to specialize in human rights. Incidentally, it should be mentioned that he has been one of the most outspoken supporters of women’s rights in the Arab blogosphere.
His expulsion did not dampen his criticisms of his society. He may find it harder now to become a lawyer, but he claims to be freer. “As I was being investigated, I discovered-for the first time-that being a student at Al-Azhar University means I was a slave, owned by it,” he said. “They were expecting me to deny or evade responsibility of my free and courageous opinions-they were waiting for me to give birth to a second personality during the investigations-but how preposterous!”
How brave, I say. The true magnitude of his words might be hard to grasp by someone who has always lived in a free society-and trust me, the U.S. is a free society, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney notwithstanding. Realizing that Hosni Mubarak has been the president of Egypt since before Kareem was even born might help us put things into perspective. Kareem has lived his entire life under the rule of one person, under the boot of the same totalitarian government. In his words, his arrest last year meant only that he was “moved from a big jail to a small disciplinary cell because [he] did not follow the rules that the 70 million Egyptians are forced to abide by, and [he] broke the widespread traditions of the Great Jail of the Arab Republic of Egypt.”
Kareem is now back in the “disciplinary cell.” He was arrested again on Nov. 6 and is being held at a detention center in Alexandria. It is not certain how much longer he will be held. Human rights organizations across the world, including Amnesty International, have protested his detention and expressed concern about the fact that he is being charged with religious crimes. He is a prisoner of conscience, jailed for having something that many of us need more of-guts.
An online petition has been established to collect signatures for Kareem’s release. But we should not stop at that. We have the resources to raise more awareness about this injustice, and we should put them to good use.
I would like to think that, as Americans and Columbians, we share Kareem’s commitment to freedom. Like Kareem, we believe that all men and women deserve equal protection under the law. Like Kareem, we believe that government and religion should never be mixed. Like Kareem, we have the energy that youth provides. Unlike Kareem, we are able to voice our opinions freely. Let us not abandon him in his fight for liberty.
The author is a student in the School of General Studies majoring in American studies.
Egypt arrests another blog critic-
Police in Cairo have detained a blogger whose posts have been critical of the Egyptian government.
ami Siyam, who blogs under the name of Ayyoub, was detained along with three friends after leaving the house of a fellow blogger late at night.
No reasons have been given for Mr Siyam’s detention. The other friends were released after being questioned.
Human rights groups have accused Egypt of eroding freedom of speech by arresting several bloggers recently.
BBC Arab Affairs analyst Magdi Abdelhadi says blogging in Egypt is closely associated with political activism in a culture where democratic freedoms are severely restricted.
Anti-harassment protest in Cairo
In recent weeks, bloggers have been exposing what they say was the sexual harassment of women at night in downtown Cairo in full view of police who did not intervene.
Mr Siyam’s host on Saturday night, Muhammad Sharqawi, was detained for several weeks earlier this year.
The most recently detained blogger, Abdel Kareem Nabil, was detained in Alexandria on 6 November and was charged with disrupting public order, inciting religious hatred and defaming the president.Amnesty International says Mr Amer appeared to have been detained for expressing critical views about Islam and Egypt’s al-Azhar religious authorities.
Egyptian fear in the blogosphere -
Egypt has once again been cracking down on freedoms of expression in cyberspace and recently arrested a 22-year-old law student blogger, Abdol Karim, for being critical of Islam in his posts.
Mr Karim, known in the blogosphere as Kareem Amer, was detained on November 6 in his home city of Alexandria. A website has been set up to campaign for his release.
Amnesty International has been campaigning against online censorship and the jailing of bloggers around the world. Reporters Without Borders has responded to Mr Karim’s case with scathing criticism, and, at the weekend, a string of Egyptian human rights organisations condemned his incarceration.
According to reports, Mr Karim has been charged with several offences, including defaming the president of Egypt, incitement to overthrow the regime and incitement to hate Islam.
Alaa Abd el-Fatah, another blogger detained by the Egyptian authorities earlier this year, and later freed, says that the jailing of Mr Karim is much more troubling because he has been targeted for his religious views.
Reporters Without Borders says that earlier this year Mr Karim was expelled from his university, the Islamic University of al-Azhar for criticising the Egyptian government’s “religious and authoritarian excesses”.
Campaigners for Mr Karim have said it is particularly worrying that the university was involved in trying to stop Mr Karim’s blogging.
Egypt: New concerns about freedom of expression
Amnesty International is concerned by the arrest and detention of blogger and former al-Azhar University student Abdel Karim Sulaiman Amer apparently because of his critical writings about Islam and Egypt’s al-Azhar religious authorities, and the recent imprisonment of Tal’at Sadat, a member of parliament, for “spreading false rumours and insulting the armed forces”. These cases represent a further erosion of freedom of expression in Egypt.
Abdel Karim Sulaiman Amer was summoned to appear before the office of the Public Prosecutor in Maharram Bek district of the city of Alexandria on 7 November following a complaint reportedly made against him by al-Azhar University. He was charged with an array of offences, including “spreading information disruptive of public order”, “incitement to hate Muslims” and “defaming the President of the Republic”. The Public Prosecutor ordered his detention for four days on 7 November, which was later reportedly extended for a further 15 days, to allow further time for investigation.
Abdel Karim Sulaiman Amer was dismissed from al-Azhar University in March 2006 after the university’s disciplinary board found him guilty of blaspheming Islam. The disciplinary measures were taken against him after he was detained by the Egyptian authorities for 12 days in October 2005 because of his writings about Islam and the sectarian riots which took place in the same month in Alexandria’s Maharram Bek district following reports that a play believed to be anti-Islam was being screened in a Coptic church in the district.
Tal’at Sadat, nephew of the assassinated former Egyptian President Mohamed Anwar Sadat, was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment with labour and fined on 31 October after being convicted of defaming the armed forces. On 5 October, the Military Prosecutor General requested that Tal’at Sadat be stripped of his parliamentary immunity to be investigated for defaming the armed forces and for spreading false information. Several days earlier, Tal’at Sadat gave a series of media interviews on the anniversary of the former president’s assassination, and alleged that senior army officers had been implicated in the killing, which was carried out by Islamist soldiers on 6 October 1981. In these interviews he suggested that Egyptian President Husni Mubarak – then vice-president – was also involved. Although a civilian, he was tried and convicted by a military court.
Amnesty International has consistently urged the Egyptian authorities to put an end to the trial of civilians before military courts, from which there is no higher judicial appeal, which violates some of the most fundamental requirements of international law, such as the right to be tried before an independent and impartial court, and the right to appeal to a higher court.
Amnesty International considers Tal’at Sadat to be a prisoner of conscience imprisoned solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression and is calling for his immediate and unconditional release. The organization is awaiting further details of the charges against Abdel Karim Sulaiman Amer but is concerned that he may also be a prisoner of conscience who is being prosecuted on account of the peaceful expression of his views about Islam and the al-Azhar religous authorities.
Amnesty International is calling on the Egyptian authorities to review or abolish legislation that, in violation of international standards, stipulates prison sentences for acts which constitute nothing more than the exercise of the rights of freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
Human Rights Organizations Condemn the Ongoing Detention of Egyptian Blogger and the Violation of His Right to Freedom of Expression
Kareem Amer is detained for an additional 15 days
Cairo – 11 November 2006
The Public Prosecutor Office of Alexandria re-detained the Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer for additional 15 days on Wednesday 8 November. This is considered a violation of his right to hold opinions without interference, which is stipulated in the Egyptian constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Egypt is a state-party.
“The arbitrary accusations against Kareem Amer indicate the authorities’ inclination to detain Kareem simply for expressing views contradictory to theirs. The Public Prosecutor told Kareem that if he did not abandon his views, even though personal, he may be imprisoned,” the undersigned human rights organizations stated.
The case of Amer is eventually testing the extent of respect granted by the Egyptian government to the right to freedom of expression, the Egyptian Constitution, and other international covenants which that right.
Kareem Amer deserves encouragement and support for risking his freedom for the sake of upholding his right to believe in secularism. His insistence on his right to freedom of expression had previously resulted in his expulsion from Al-Azhar University. The right to freedom of thought and expression is a basic human right that should not be undermined. Article 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948, states:
Article 18: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change religion or belief, the freedom to manifest religion or belief in worship, observance, practice, and teaching either alone or in community with others and in public or private.”
Article 19: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
The undersigned human rights organizations call upon the Egyptian government to immediately release Kareem Amer, protect him against more harassment, and guarantee his right to freedom of expression.
Signatory Organizations:
From Egypt:
1. The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information
2. The Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement
3. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights
4. Association for Human Rights Legal Aid
5. Habi Center for Environmental Rights
6. Al-Nadeem Center for Psychological Rehabilitation and Treatment of Victims of Violence
7. Hisham Mubark Law Center
8. Land Center for Human Rights
9. Shomuu Assocaition for Human Rights and People with Disabilities
10. Egyptian Center for Human Rights
11. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
12. The Civil Observatory of Human Rights
13. Al-Ganob Center for Human Rights
From Bahrain:
14. Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights
To read the Arabic origional Click HERE
