Last update - 00:00 12/06/2007
Unleashing the Internet genie in Egypt
By Ofri Ilani
CAIRO - When Sayad Rajab wants to update his blog, he goes to a small Internet cafe next to the coffee shop he frequents in the Egyptian capital. He does not have a computer at home or at work. Therefore, he has to maintain his blog from Internet cafes located next to places he happens to visit. His Web site's home page (awtlia.blogspirit.com) shows a picture of the blogger at a demonstration in Cairo. Above it, a poster of Che Guevara is displayed. "I love Che Guevara, he is my hero," Rajab says. But unlike innumerable young bloggers the world over, who merely enjoy boasting about their revolutionary opinions, Rajab's blog truly struggles with an oppressive and rigid regime that restricts his freedom of expression and that of those who share his views.
In recent days, the struggle over online freedom of expression in Egypt has become more dramatic. Every one of the posts written on the blog tells the story of someone who has been arrested, tortured or persecuted by the Egyptian security services. Some of them include photographs of burns, cuts and other signs of torture. It should not be taken for granted that pictures of this nature are published, especially in Egypt. At the beginning of May, Al-Jazeera's journalist Howayda Taha was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for "fabricating video footage" of police torture and "harming Egypt's national interests."
Rajab claims that he is not afraid. As a devoted Communist and veteran political activist in Egypt's small Socialist party, he has already had experience dealing with the security services. He lowers his voice when he expresses his views, if only so as not to attract unnecessary attention to himself in the coffee shop. But he allows himself greater freedom of expression within the framework of his blog. He has no hesitations about criticizing corrupt police officers or the "lies of the interior ministry personnel" about torturing migrants from Sudan, who are seeking employment. "The pictures in the blog are the response to the government's denials," he writes. In another posting, he calls for a boycott of the referendum on changing the constitution and for freeing Ayman Nour, the leader of the opposition party.
Rajab began his blog on the war against torture about a year and a half ago, after trying other kinds of protests. Blogs have become one of the most effective means of expression for the Egyptian opposition recently. While the newspapers, including those that do not serve as state organs, are subjected to severe restrictions, the censorship of the Internet is more lax - perhaps because the authorities are less aware of what goes on in the virtual world, or perhaps because they do not have sufficient means to shut down all the Web sites involved.
"I want to speak about this glorious thing called the Internet, that genie that goes everywhere and reaches everyone, that moves via wires and cables, and even through the air. This genie opened the bottle by itself and let us out once and for all; it is he that has given us unlimited freedom of expression such as we never had in the past," the blogger Wael Abbas, Egypt's most senior political blogger, wrote on the popular site "Egyptian awareness" (misrdigital.blogspirit.com).
"Over the past few years the struggle between the government and the opposition in Egypt has been getting worse. The virtual sphere is playing a vital part in this development," says Dr. Yoram Meital, chairman of the Herzog Center for the study of the Middle East at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. "The number of bloggers active in Egypt is not very big compared with other countries in the Middle East. But this is a very courageous and determined community, and, from time to time, its members pay a heavy price for their activism."
Last week, Amnesty International published a report warning about the growing strength of censorship and the repression of freedom of expression on the Internet in numerous countries throughout the world. "The virus of restricting the Internet is spreading," the report says. The Chinese model of Internet networks that allow economic and advertising activity but restrict freedom of expression and privacy is becoming increasingly prevalent, the report adds. It also mentions that if there were just a handful of countries that restricted Internet access five years ago, dozens of countries block sites and detain bloggers today.
Despite the relative freedom enjoyed by its blogoshpere, Egypt is one of the only countries in the world where a blogger has been sent to jail for a prolonged period for publishing his views. In its report, Amnesty International points out that a 22-year-old Egyptian blogger, Abdolkarim Nabil Suleiman, was jailed for four years in February. In his blog, karam903.blogspot.com, he attacked Cairo's Al-Azhar University, where he had studied, calling it the "Al-Qaida university." He also expressed his views opposing compulsory induction into the Egyptian army, and compared the Prophet Mohammed with Ariel Sharon. All of this was enough to indict him for insulting Islam (three years) and insulting President Hosni Mubarak (one year).
The United Sates made do with a hesitant condemnation, perhaps because Mubarak's regime is pro-American and receives billions of dollars of American assistance each year. It appears that the White House is unperturbed by the oppression of the Egyptian opposition, as long as the stability of the current regime is ensured. Analysts in the American media who at the time praised the "liberation of the Iraqi people," have said that Egypt does not really need "more democracy than it has now," as long as its stability is maintained. But the price for this stability is being paid by the democratic activists. They have been abandoned and are wasting away in detention cells and torture chambers.
Not all the opposition bloggers are Marxists or oppose religion. Many of them are pro-Islamists, who attack Egypt's secular regime. The Muslim Brotherhood, the strongest opposition movement in Egypt, boasts an extremely rich Web site that also has an English version (ikhwanweb.com). It contains postings by the movement's leader, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, as well as news with an Islamic slant and a number of blogs, including a blog from the "daughters of the Muslim Brotherhood," high school pupils who support the movement and describe their way of life and their opinions.
"It is possible that the regime in Egypt is today trying to curb the limited liberalization it began to allow about two years ago," Meital says. "But it will find it very difficult to turn back time. The means of communication are no longer merely in the hands of the government."
For better or for worse, it seems that it will be difficult to return the genie of the Internet into the bottle, in Egypt as well as in other countries. "The world has changed," wrote Mohammed Guzlan, a Muslim Brotherhood activist. "There are so many ways to get organized - blogs, emails and various other means that enable us to establish a connection with people. There is no way back."