Stories about Egypt from September, 2009
Egypt: Another journalist to be deported
To continue the series of harassing or deporting journalists in Egypt, like Travis Randall, Philip Rizk and Wael Abbas; Per Bjorklund, a Swedish journalist and blogger has been detained in Cairo airport upon his arrival. He’s been stopped by security and is to be deported back to Prague without an...
Egypt: Bargaining Bloggers to stop opposing the Government
“You will be behind the sun” was the expression used by the Dean Abdul Hadi, General Inspector of State Security at Fayoum (Egyptian Province), while he was interrogating the Egyptian blogger AbdelRahman Fares last Friday, 25 September, 2009, who blogs at Lesany Hoa elKalm (My Pen Is My Tongue). Hours...
Egypt: Blogger warned by state security if he goes on writing on the internet
The Egyptian blogger Abdel Rahman Fares was summoned to State Security headquarters, where he was blamed for his online writings. Fares was warned that he would be arrested if he goes on blogging, and asked to give up both his online and offline activities. Fares is blogging at Lesani Howa...
Egypt: Detained blogger assaulted and asked to convert to Islam in exchange for his freedom
The lawyer of the arrested blogger Hani Nazeer still not allowed to visit his client. However, the Christian blogger Nazeer managed to contact The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information revealing that he was assaulted and asked to convert to Islam in exchange for his freedom: He and other inmates...
The Power of 140 Characters: Twitter in the Middle East
The massive, sustained protests in Iran this past month against the regime’s apparent falsification of the presidential election results was enabled by widespread employment of new communication technologies. Among them is Twitter, the micro-blog which enables its users to distribute short messages of no more than 140 characters (‘Tweets’) via...
Egypt Interrogating Netizen for a Blog Comment
On September the 3rd, 2009, Khaled elBalshy, the Editor-In-Chief of the Al-Badeel newspaper, who maintains a personal blog at http://elbalshy.blogspot.com, was interrogated by the Interior Ministry's Internet Crimes department for a comment on one of his blog posts left by an anonymous visitor. The comment was in response to a...
Danish-Egyptian Biometric ID-Card Scrutinized Before Take-off
Danish aid is advanzing a joint venture that will sell sofisticated biometric identification technology to the Egyptian Ministry of Communication. NGO questions lack of oversight and evaluation of whether the technology can be used to advance surveillance.
Egypt: American blogger and activist detained,Laptop Confiscated
Last night, Tuesday 1st September 09, the American activist and blogger Travis Randall, who participated in a small march supporting Gaza earlier this year, was detained by security officers for tow hours upon his arrival at Cairo International Airport. Security officers gave no explanation for the detention. Furthermore, they confiscated Randall's laptop and cell phone.
