Egyptian blogger and activist Alaa Abdel Fatah was detained along with several other Egyptian pro-democracy activists on Monday. Here is how Sandmonkey describes the situation on the Free Alaa! blog:
As you may have heard by now, Egyptian Blogger Alaa Abdel Fatah has been arrested alongside 10 others while demonstrating in support of the independence of the Judiciary in Egypt and the release of previous demonstrators who were detained 2 weeks earlier. The Police entrapped them, cordoning off their peaceful protest and then proceeded to handpick the demonstrators that they wanted to detain, beat them, and then arrested them.
Alaa and those arrested with him are now arrested for 15 days "pending investigation", which could be renewed indefinitely if the state so wishes. He and the men were sent to the infamous Torah Prison and the girls to the Qanatir prison for the duration. This makes them hardly safe, because stuff that goes on in Egyptian prisons on the hands of the jailors: beatings, sexual assaults, torture of all kinds.
Currently there are about 48 detained, 6 of them are bloggers, and 3 of them are women. The best known is Alaa, which makes him the posterboy of this campaign - but getting them out is equally as important. Egypt has fewer than 830 bloggers all in all, 60 of whom are political and less than 30 are politically active. Now 6 of those are in jail - 20% of all politically active Egyptian bloggers - and amongst them one of Egypt's most highly profiled one.
For more info on the situation see these articles by Reuters, AP, and The Guardian. See posts on Global Voices here, here, here, and here.
What can you do to help? You can Google Bomb Egypt with the Free Alaa! blog. You can also stick Free Alaa! badges on your blog, and participate in protest outside Egyptian embassies and consulates - Sandmonkey has more info here.
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Posted by: wail | May 24, 2006 at 04:09 AM