Category: Blog

Another Facebook activist detained and abused

Posted on By 3arabawy

Troubling news about Ahmad Maher!

The Daily News Egypt reports:

The administrator and arguably the real creator of the April 6 Strike group on Facebook Ahmad Maher was detained briefly Wednesday and beaten, his lawyer told Daily News Egypt.
Khaled Ali, who is the head of the Hisham Mubarak Center for Human Rights, posted details of the incident on the center’s website saying Maher was detained for the better part of the day before being released at dawn.
According to Ali, Maher was near his home in New Cairo and on his way to work at 1 pm when he was forced from his car and thrown into a microbus where he was transported to the local police station.
He was beaten there and then transported to State Security headquarters in Lazoughly downtown at 4 pm. There, he was reportedly tied at the feet and hung upside down and beaten again, Ali said.
Maher was dragged by the rope and was threatened with rape, all the while being questioned about the Facebook group and its password, Ali added.
When a group is created on Facebook, a password is not needed, with the creators and chosen “officers” given direct access to moderation of the group.
Maher was told that he amounted to nothing, the country was under control and a bunch of kids would not be able to change anything.
Ali told Daily News Egypt that State Security officers were angry that Maher had ignored a previous request to appear at the headquarters for questioning.

And then the bad-cop-good-cop game continues:

At that point another officer came in and shouted at the ones beating Maher telling them he had not ordered them to do this. The officer then told Maher they knew he was a patriot but that there were others within the group who were attempting to sabotage the country.
At that point the officer told him he would be released and he was given his clothes and other articles with the exception of his camera which the officer promised would be returned later. He was then taken back to his car at 4 am.

The Revolution will be Flickrized

Posted on By 3arabawy

I’ll go back again to the issue of photography…

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I gave recently some talks about the Mahalla Uprising, among labor and progressive circles in the Bay Area, as part of the effort (tremendously helped by friends in California and NYC I’m grateful for) to spread the word about what’s going on back in Egypt among the activist circles here. I always request from the organizers of the event to bring a projector if possible, so as to play a slideshow of pix from the Mahalla Uprising as well as other photos of demos and strikes in Egypt to accompany my presentation. Why? Because again spreading the image I believe is just as important as spreading the word.

I may sound like a broken record since I already posted few times about this before, but I’ll keep stressing it: Whatever event you are holding, whatever protest you are staging, please take a digital camera with you and snap a pic or two of the event. (If you can take videos too that would be even greater). It’s important for other people around the world to “see” what you are doing with their own eyes, instead of just “hearing” or “reading” about it. People need to see with their own eyes both police brutality and social resistance.

Struggles spread by the domino effect, as Mahalla proved since December 2006, and as the Palestinian intifada proved in 2000. When a revolution (or what the Imperialists and the Arab regimes call “instability”) breaks out in one country, it hardly stays within its boundaries–and surely the coming Egyptian revolution won’t defy what has almost become a natural law in politics as proven in every single uprising in the last century. Spreading the image contributes tremendously as a catalyst in this process. A victory for the workers in one sector will inspire others within the same sector and outside to follow suit. Showing photos and videos of those victories helps in getting the message across to the workers: “They have done it over there. You can do it over here!”

Spending hours trying to convince someone with the ability of workers to self organize and bring about a smashing defeat against the state if they act collectively, could just be narrowed down to few minutes if they saw for example Nasser Nouri’s photos of the Mahalla Dec 2006 strike.

You can talk for hours about the revolutionary potential of the masses in the urban towns to overthrow their shackles of fear and confront the Mubarak’s dictatorship at times of rising social struggle, without the help of the American tanks… or you can simply show whoever you are talking with these photos from Mahalla taken last April.

Revolutionary activists involved in consciousness raising efforts, propaganda or agitation among the workers anywhere HAVE to do their best to visualize what they are talking about or arguing for. At the same time, there is an immense need for these images to reach millions of other workers and activists around the world. That could be very inspiring for the latter, as well as a catalyst to generate more support for those facing the onslaught.

If you have photos of demos, strikes, factory occupations, or whatever theme that is directly related to the social struggle in your country, please go ahead and upload them online. Don’t leave them on your hard drive.

This is the memory of the class, and we shouldn’t lose it coz the ruling classes always do their best to distort or delete it.

Mubarak’s pigs order mobile firms to bar anonymous users

Posted on By 3arabawy

From Reuters:

Egypt has asked mobile phone companies to block service to anonymous subscribers as a public security measure, and at least two firms have begun efforts to comply, Egyptian officials and mobile firms said on Monday.
The move comes as Egypt tries to combat a wave of public discontent over rising prices and low wages that have sparked a series of labor and anti-government strikes, organized largely by mobile phone and over the Internet.
The move is expected to affect several hundred thousand customers who did not register their names and addresses when they acquired phone lines — still a small portion of overall subscribers in the most populous Arab country.
“Everyone who uses the telephone must be known,” Trade Minister Rachid Muhammad Rachid told a news conference, adding that the move was needed for “public security.”
Vodafone Egypt, one of three mobile operators in Egypt, has started disabling text messaging capabilities for anonymous subscribers, and was asking them to come forward with their details, a company spokesman said.
Rival operator Mobinil linked the move to government plans for mobile number portability, which would allow subscribers to change service providers while keeping their original phone numbers.