For those in the DC area, below is the confirmed information concerning the Free Kareem rally to be held. Please show your support and attend it if you’re anywhere close to this area!

Date: Friday, November 9, 2007
Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Location: Egyptian Embassy Cultural Office (Dupont Circle)
Street: 1303 New Hampshire Ave NW
City/Town: Washington, DC

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Message from the organizers:

Regardless of whether you agree with Kareem, we can all agree that no one should be imprisoned for voicing their opinions. We ask only that you join us during your lunch hour to support Kareem and free expression.

Facebook event group.

For more information, please contact Anca or Andrew.

(Updated)

We have 10 confirmed cities so far that will take place in the worldwide Free Kareem rally on Friday, the 9th of November.

1- Brussels
2- Rome
3- Stockholm
4- Washington DC
5- New York City
6- Prague
7- Bucharest
8- Berlin
9- Amsterdam
10- London
11- Athens
12 – Mexico City
13 – São Paulo
14 – Rio de Janeiro

We are aiming for much more, so if your city is not listed here and you would like to organize one, please contact us!

If you live in any of the above cities, please attend a rally! We will post detailed information concerning exact times, location addresses and the organizers’ contact information. This is just an entry to give you some time to plan ahead.

The day for the Free Kareem rallies (to take place worldwide) is nearing. We need your help!

We have five confirmed locations so far:
- New York City
- Romania
- Germany
- Washington, DC
- The Netherlands

Help us organize 10 more! There will most likely be on in London, France, Belgium, and Sweden. They are still unconfirmed locations, but if you are willing to organize a rally in your city please do, and contact us for any details!

We will be posting the contact information of these organizers very shortly.

Until then, please download these flyers and place them around your campus or wherever else you think is approrpriate:

If you can’t see, this is what it says on the bottom of the flyer, next to “why you should support Kareem“:

The theme of the worldwide rallies is “One year is enough!” since it will mark Kareem’s one year imprisonment. Remember that although he was officially sentenced on the 22nd of Feburary, he has been imprisoned since the 6th of November. We are holding the rallies on the 9th of November however, so do not get confused! This is to ensure that all students can also show up to the rallies, which (it not on Fridays) they cannot do due to classes or office hours.

The good folks behind the Committee to Protect Bloggers have generously helped organize a Twitter day for Kareem which will take place on the 6th of November. If you use twitter, please consider joining us in spreading further awareness on Kareem’s case. You can read all about this event here:

As we mentioned before, we are co-sponsoring a protest on November 6 with FreeKareem. On that date, the Egyptian blogger Kareem will have been unjustly incarcerated for one year, due to communicating his opinions on his blog. There are physical marches and other activities set to coincide with this date. On our end, we are asking everyone to use their Twitter account to talk about Kareem, free speech, imprisoned bloggers and have related conversations for the whole day. We’re offering the badge above that you can download on your blog or site to indicate your belief in free speech for bloggers worldwide and for Kareem in Egypt in particular. (The bluer version is available in our Flickr account in the sidebar.)

When you write about this aspect of the day, please use the tag twitter4kareem.

Go to original post.

Dear readers,

In a few months, on the 6th of November, it will be Kareem’s 1 year anniversary in prison. Can you believe it? One entire year in prison so far merely for speaking his mind! Sharing a dreadful place with actual criminals, because he was brave enough to express his opinions…. on a personal blog!

It’s time for the world to move, and it’s time for us to show Egypt that we have NOT forgotten about Kareem. The less action people take, the more likely similar incidents will happen. We have to oppose this and we have to do it together, as strongly as possible. We must unite to support Kareem regardless of our backgrounds, religious differences, nationalities, or whatever else that usually keeps us apart… we must unite for human rights and free speech, regardless of whether or not we personally agreed with Kareem’s political and religious statements.

We have decided to mark Kareem’s one year anniversary with another (and more powerful!) Free Kareem worldwide rally… we are aiming for at least 20 cities, where people will gather in front of their local Egyptian Embassy with signs and statements to free the innocent blogger.

Due to the fact that the 6th of November will be on a Tuesday, where many people might have work or classes, we think it’s best to move the rally date to Friday, the 9th of November.

We are looking for as much help as we can get to make this possible, so please help us by contacting us using the below info (or via our contact form) and let us know if you are willing to organize one. Please consider doing so! All we ask is that you gather with a few people in front of the embassy to make your voices heard, knowing that many people around the world are also dedicating their time towards this noble and vital cause.

Contact info:

Please provide:

Name
Country
Your requirements (flier information, banner advice, directions, etc)

Thank you, we are trying our best to make this as successful and effective as possible, so please contact us now for collaboration, suggestions and ideas! And more importantly…

SPREAD THE WORD!

Alexandra Sandels reports on further human rights violations in Egypt, noting that bloggers and activists unite for the sake of freedom of speech within the country:

CAIRO: Bloggers and activists belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood and the political opposition joined forces at a rally and conference on the defense of electronic press freedom in Egypt at the Press Syndicate in Downtown Cairo on Wednesday night.

Armed with banners, megaphones, and Egyptian flags chanting slogans like “we are forbidden to speak” and “where is our freedom?” activists staged a pre-event manifestation outside the Press Syndicate, denouncing alleged crackdowns on outspoken web activists by the authorities.

Kareem is also mentioned in the article:

In January this year, Alexandrian student blogger Kareem Amer was sentenced to four years in prison for defaming Islam and President Mubarak on his internet blog.

We would like to correct the above statement by reminding everyone that Kareem was actually sentenced officially on February 22 of this year. His case remains to be a powerful example of a grave attack against freedom of speech in Egypt.

Read the full article on the Daily Star here.

Thanks to Lamis Khalilova’s initiative, Amnesty Czech held a demonstration at the Egyptian Embassy on April 27. Here’s their account on the events that occurred during the day, along with some pictures:

Thanks to Vaclav Mlynarik for announcing the event at the city hall and getting a permit to gather in print, we were there both de facto and de jure. Many passersby, including high school students, families taking a walk, and even people heading home for a weekend in a rush, stopped to sign the letter of appeal and lots of members and friends of AI showed up too.

Those who needed more time promised to check out the freekareem.org site and sign the online petition. Even a taxi driver stopped his car , asked us what all the fuss was about and when we explained and he saw the banners, he too signed the petition through his rolled down window!

Vaclav Mlynarik wrote a letter to his Excellency the Ambassador of Egypt to the Czech Republic, which we all signed (30 signatures) and handed over, along with a short printed account of Kareem’s case to the second secretary at the embassy, Mr. Ahmad Sharif.

Petr Vitek, Vaclav Mlynarik and I introduced ourselves and exchanged greetings before Petr began to highlight why we were here. What was supposed to be short and polite quickly developed into a conversation.

We spoke to him about our concerns regarding the human rights situation in Egypt in general and about Kareem’s case in particular, he shared our concern and agreed that the right to free speech is an important right that needed to be upheld. He also said that he shared our views on human rights, however he went on to say that in the region, human rights are “very specific” and there are “special cases” we must pay attention to. We disagreed with all due respect and clearly stated that human rights are universal rights, which do not depend on gender, race and /or religion. Where a person is born should never determine the amount of freedom he/she enjoys.

We acknowledged that Egypt has made a tremendous amount of work, which has led to the improving of the standard of living in the country, but we still deemed it was time for an even bigger shift on the humans rights stage, we told him it was important for Egypt to differentiate between militant terrorists and its citizens and especially the youth who practice their basic human rights; we here in Prague would not go to jail for thoughts that don’t incite on violence published on a blog and we want Egyptian bloggers to enjoy the same rights.

Mr. Shareef promised he would hand over the letter to the Egyptian authorities and assured us that the officials in Egypt would receive it.

At the rally we projected a video compilation onto a white screen. The material projected were mainly clips kindly compiled by Michal Stasa from the material available on your site, the rally outside the Egyptian booth in Paris, Posts from Kareem’s blog, Kareem’s interviews and people’s opinions on Kareem’s case.

The employees of the embassy took pictures and videos of us and that is visible in one of the pictures, it was expected and we don’t mind it at all, in fact we exchanged waves and smiles. It is also important to say that the Czech Police were very polite, supportive and went out of their way to make us feel welcome. I hope that one day demonstrators in an Arab country experience the same kind of interaction with the police.

The media here in the Czech Republic and in Europe in general gave us a lot of coverage and that is mainly thanks to the excellent efforts of our press secretary Eva Dobrovolna. The day started with an invitation and a 7-minute interview for a morning news and events show on the Czech National TV, on which I appeared. The Czech News agency covered the event too and published news item in English and Czech that has appeared in a few dailies. Last but not least was the radio coverage of RBB Radio Multikulti, the largest German national radio station; their Arabic section covered the event with Amnesty International outside the Egyptian Embassy in Berlin and called us here to Prague while we were at the demonstration. I gave them a phone interview which is now available on their site online. I think it especially crucial that Kareem’s ordeal be told in full with no cosmetic adjustments and allowances in Arabic.

We hope that Kareem will soon hear of these worldwide events and efforts and that he will feel encouraged, high spirited and optimistic because he is not alone. We also hope and believe that he will now sense an improvement in the treatment he is receiving in jail, which is very often the case and Amnesty International has had that experience with prisoners of conscience right after such medial attention. We hope to see him released from jail before his sentence is completed. We also hope that this event encourages bloggers everywhere to be courageous and outspoken, and that they aren’t forced to self sensor. May their pens never dry and their keyboards never fail them.

Lamis Khalilova
Member of board of directors AI CR

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Sympathetic for Kareem’s case and longing to raise awareness about the injustice he’s been facing, individual human rights activists (accompanied by the Free Kareem Editor) rented a car from Toronto, and drove for four hours to have their voices heard in Canada’s capital city.

Our trip consisted of three primary visits: Parliament Hill, Amnesty Canada, and, of course, the Egyptian Embassy.

I must express my deepest respect and admiration for Cam Vidler, Chris Ding, and Seyitbek Usmanov. Thanks very much, gentlemen, for riding so far and protesting in the rain!

Some of our posters:

Parliament Hill

In the above photo, from left to right: Chris, Seyitbek, and Cam.

Despite the weather, there was a good number of visitors to the Hill. Fliers were handed out, and Kareem’s case was discussed with several interested members of the public, who expressed shock at what Kareem is going through. Some foreigners seemed to understand his situation because their home countries faced similar restrictions on the right to free expression.

One human rights activist told us she was working on a campaign to free Huseyin Celil, a Canadian human rights activist who was sentenced to life in prison by Chinese authorities. She was interested in our campaign and told us she will be checking the Web site.

Before visiting the Egyptian Embassy, the team passed by Amnesty Canada’s main office. We handed them a copy of our open letter to the Egyptian Ambassador, the Free Kareem petition, some of Kareem’s articles, and fliers. They assured us they will vigilantly work for his freedom.

Egyptian Embassy

Embassy officials seemed to expect us! We did not even need to knock on the door when someone opened it and asked us what we wanted. We told him we were here to express our support for Kareem Amer, and that we had a letter and petition for the Egyptian Ambassador. He accepted the package to the Ambassador, and following that, we got to business on the sidewalk.

By this time, several Embassy officials were coming in and out through the door, speaking in Arabic and expressing to each other distress over us protesting in front of the Embassy. They got particularly upset each time we took a picture!

Some of them tried reasoning with us. They were extremely respectful, and they asked us to leave because we did not have permits to protest and hand out fliers in front of their Embassy. However, we insisted we had a right to stand on the public sidewalk, and since there were only four of us it should not be a problem. We were simply peacefully and quietly protesting for Kareem’s imprisonment, we told them.

They tried speaking in Arabic most of the time because they wanted to focus on (intimidate?) the only Arab speaker in the team. They said that the RCMP and police will be coming within minutes and that, as fellow Arabs, they did not want to get an Arab into trouble. However, the authorities never came.

One official, calling himself a diplomat, told us that he knew all about Abdul Kareem’s case and about the situation of the blogosphere (implying we did not need to be here). We explained to him that we were not blaming any individual from the government. We assured them we were on their side, and that we are just raising awareness so President Mubarak can correct the mistake made by the Alexandria court.

Another official told us that we are free to protest, and that he is free to call the police to arrest us. I agreed with him wholeheartedly, and I expressed my sincere wish that Egyptians in their homeland live under the same freedoms he’s enjoying in Canada.

Despite their fierce opposition, they were courteous and we ended the rally on good terms, even shaking hands with them.

We were happy with the outcome and we hope we’ve made a difference last Friday. We dedicate our trip to Kareem and all prisoners of conscience. The truth shall make you all free!

It appears we have a twelfth capital that took part in the worldwide Free Kareem rallies last week! The Young Liberals of Norway held small event outside the Egyptian Embassy in Oslo, and presented a letter to the Egyptian Ambassador. (Hat tip: Knud Edmund Berthelsen)

Many thanks to the Young Liberals of Norway! We are also appreciative of the International Federation of Liberal Youth for spreading the word to its member organizations (including the Young Liberals of Norway) about the Free Kareem demonstrations.