We have just added a map feature where people can give shout outs to Kareem from all over the world. Please use it as we will show these records to Kareem if ever the chances arrives so that he knows how global this campaign really is.
Click here and add a short note.
We’ll be using this to mark Kareem’s worldwide rally locations as well.
To those who contacted us claiming that we are representatives or supporters of Faith Freedom, you are mistaken. We are neither.
We realize that Faith Freedom made the following coverage:
Egyptian Blogger Arrested, Expelled From Al Azhar For Exposing The Truth
Dahsyat: Siswa Al Azhar Mengutuk Islam! (Indonesian)
The Jailing Of Abdel Kareem, Egyptian Blogger
Nine Years For Nothing: Egyptian Blogger Nabil Soliman Goes on Trial
Kareem Amer (forum post)
There Is No Deity but the Human Being (featuring the campaign’s translation of his post)
This support for Kareem is not linked to us in any way. They made no contributions whatsoever to this campaign.
This support for Kareem is also aimed not at the promotion of free speech, but rather the destruction of Islam and general disrespect of Muslims, something that we do not support in this campaign. Thus we are not associated with Faith Freedom; and would not like to be. Thank you for understanding.
To repeat ourselves:
The creators and main supporters of the Free Kareem Coalition are Muslim, and we are doing this despite what Kareem said about our religion. Free speech doesn’t mean “speech that you approve of.” It includes criticism.
You may be disgusted at what he said, even angered. That’s okay, so are we! But we will defend with all our might his right to express such opinions, because it is his basic, inalienable human right. We stand by and fully support Kareem through these difficult times and will continue working on this campaign until he is freed.
Instead of attacking us for either reasons:
1) For being Muslim and embracing Islam
2) For supporting Kareem who is against the teachings of Islam
Please be respectful of what we are trying to do here regardless of your backgrounds and biases. We’re doing it in the name of freedom and free speech, not to enforce any ideologies or beliefs.
The Free Kareem website is now fully recovered from the hack that took place a few weeks ago, the toolbar and RSS feeds should now be functioning properly. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused to people who subscribed with us.
We would also like to take this opportunity to express our concern for Yogesh Swami, an activist in India whose friends are supporters of our Free Kareem initiative. Yogesh is currently in critical condition as a result of a major car accident that took place. He’s a Delhi-based social and youth activist. The surgery he will need to undergo is a very serious one, as the injury caused massive blood clots within the brain.
To all friends of Yogesh, especially Sandeep, thank you for supporting our friend Kareem, and for this our support for your friend Yogesh is guaranteed. We will do our best to help you wherever possible.
For more information -
Read the appeal in English (word document) or Hindi (PDF file)
Get well soon Yogesh!
The below report from the Daily Star Egypt extensively covers our partnership with the New Youth 4 campaign -
CAIRO: Arab and Chinese youth activists will be joining forces in a new Internet campaign calling for the release of imprisoned Chinese bloggers and demanding greater freedom of expression in China.
The campaign “New Youth 4” received its name after the case of the four young Chinese activists Jin Haike, Xu Wei, Yang Zili and Zhang Honghai, who in 2003 were charged with “subverting state power and the overthrowing of the socialist system” and sentenced to prison for setting up the Internet discussion group the “New Youth Society;” a forum allegedly advocating social and democratic reform.
The Beijing Intermediate People’s Court sentenced the men to long prison terms in spring 2003 ranging between eight to ten years; a verdict that has been subject to strong criticism from international rights groups, including Amnesty International and Committee to Protect Journalists.
The campaign, accessible at www.newyouth4.org, is inspired and hosted by the Free Kareem Coalition — an online project launched by Arab activists in support of the imprisoned Egyptian student blogger Kareem Amer who earlier this year was sentenced to four years in prison for defaming Islam and President Mubarak on his weblog.
“It was from watching the success of freekareem.org that we began to think that we could make a difference here in China. I contacted some friends who knew the people behind Freekareem.org and they seemed to understand at once how important our project in China was,” the New Youth 4 Coordinator who asked to remain anonymous told The Daily Star Egypt in an email interview.
Esra’a Ahmed, director of the Free Kareem Coalition told The Daily Star Egypt that the right to free speech is an “incredibly important cause to fight for,” leading her team to help set up the New Youth 4 only days after receiving the request.
Furthermore, Ahmed emphasized the importance of networking between activist communities in different parts of the world.
“Networking is extremely powerful. Today these Chinese activists need our help, tomorrow we might need theirs. We help each other and that will strengthen our campaigns and hopefully help us achieve our goals,” she said.
Both Egypt and China have come under strong criticism from rights groups for alleged web censorship and crackdowns on the countries’ so-called “cyber dissidents.”
So far in Egypt this year, Alexandrian blogger Kareem Amer has been sentenced to four years in prison for defaming Islam and President Mubarak on his Internet blog while the Brotherhood’s blogger/journalist Abdel Moneim Mahmoud was arrested in Mid-April on what appeared to be rather unclear charges. Rights groups, activists, and the Brotherhood stress that Mahmoud’s detainment was a consequence of his online writings, where he posed criticism towards the Egyptian government.
Most recently, blogger Omar Sharkawy was arrested and detained on June 11 for three days while covering alleged fraud at Egypt’s recent Shoura elections.
In late 2006, Egypt was crowned one of the worlds 13 worst Internet Enemies by Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) or Reporters without borders with the argument that the Egyptian authorities “display an extremely disturbing authoritarianism as regards the Internet.”
In regards to China, RSF refers to the giant in the East in a 2007 report as the “world’s most advanced country in Internet filtering.”
“The authorities carefully monitor technological progress to ensure that no new window of free expression opens up, after initially targeting websites and chat forums, they nowadays concentrate on blogs and video exchange sites. China now has nearly 17 million bloggers. Although it is an enormous number, very few of them dare to tackle sensitive issues, still less criticize government policy. Firstly, because China’s blog tools include filters that block ‘subversive’ word strings. Secondly, because the companies operating these services, both Chinese and foreign, are pressured by the authorities to control content,” RSF stated.
According to RSF figures, 52 persons are currently imprisoned for “expressing themselves too freely online.”
New Youth’s Coordinator added to The Daily Star Egypt that “speaking your mind in China can be a dangerous game.”
Furthermore, New Youth 4 emphasized that while Egypt and China differ greatly from one another in terms of geography, culture, and language, the process of silencing dissent and open discussion is “eerily similar.”
“In the cases of Egypt and China, it appears that we have weak
governments that do not understand that a nation can become stronger
through open dialogue,” they told The Daily Star Egypt.When asked whether pressure from rights groups and activists can influence the decisions of national governments, Ahmed answers “most definitely,” highlighting the numerous rallies and campaigns organized in several world capitals by the Free Kareem Coalition.
“Thanks to worldwide rallies our team organized, many leaders, and politicians from all over the world quickly gained interest and expressed their concerns regarding Egypt’s human rights abuses,” Ahmed claimed.
New Youth’s 4 Coordinator also emphasized the importance of public pressure, stressing that “public suasion is an incredibly powerful tool.”
“We are not trying to shame the Chinese government (in this campaign). We seek to convince them to look at the case of the four bloggers. So much as hearing from other citizens of the world is very, very helpful in our endeavors,” said the coordinator.
Unfortunately, someone gained access to our FTP, databases, and host panel and managed to take down all our websites, including this one. Everything was affected: files, plugins, backups, posts. Lalith our webmaster is still in the process of recovering our data. Please be patient with us if you note any problems with the site; we are aware of the issues and we are working on fixing it.
Update: Most things seem to be back to normal, but our RSS feeds, both for our posts and comments, are dysfunctional. We are working on it.
We would like to remind everyone that a few days ago we changed Kareem’s prison address on our “write to Kareem!” page.
Here’s the new mailing address if you wish to send a letter:
Arabic (must be included!)
عبدا لكريم نبيل سليمان
سجن برج العرب
الإسكندرية
عنبر 24 – غرفة 10
جمهورية مصر العربية
Jpeg version (for those whose computers don’t support Arabic):
English
Alexandria
Borg Al-Arab Prison
Room 10 Section 24
Prisoner Abdul Kareem Nabil Suleiman
The Arab Republic of Egypt
Please consider writing Kareem a letter expressing your support. It’s very important to let him know that he is not alone in his defense of free speech. Please reward his courage by sending him a letter to lift his spirits up.
Note: You can compose your letters in either English or Arabic.
We are very happy to announce our new eCard system for the Free Kareem campaign. We believe that such a service might help us keep people aware and informed about Kareem’s unfortunate case. It deserves to be remembered.
Please help out by sending a card. [What you see in the main page is thumbnails, click on each image for an enlarged and original version.]
A great way to help and to stay in touch with campaign news is to download this handy toolbar -
You also have the option of chatting with other Free Kareem supporters via this toolbar.
We have just added a Free Kareem Countup feature on our website. If you would like to spread the word about Kareem, you can now do so by counting up the days Kareem has spent in prison… merely for expressing his opinions.
You can click on the following to download the code, and if for any reason this doesn’t show up, leave a comment and we’ll e-mail the code to you. We hope to modify this in order to look better, but for now, this should do:
countup1.txt [For IE users, right click and download, then open it on notebook or as a text document.]
Sample:
(Note: While the sample looks awful Internet Explorer, the actual code works just fine.)
Following up on our project Free Activist, we have also started Media Students, where we give tutorials on how to start and market campaigns successfully. Our work there is also available in Arabic, and soon in Urdu, as we share the platform with Pakistani activists as well.
For our first lesson on what to do when a blogger or journalist is imprisoned, click here for English, and here for the Arabic version.
Our 2nd lesson offers some basics on how to initially market a campaign (we are still in the process of translating this into Arabic.)
The Free Kareem Coalition has always been here to help. While we cannot always report on all the human rights violations, we are more than glad to support your efforts in doing so, and to help you create something as widely publicized as our Free Kareem campaign, which we are working very hard on expanding.
Aim high. Take the first step forward and the rest will follow, as our worldwide rallies have shown.
PS – You can also access the site through FreeBloggers.net, which redirects you to the Media Students project.
