Egypt targets Web-savvy opponents
Activists say Abdel Moneim Mahmoud was arrested because he's a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and has a popular blog.
from the May 2, 2007 edition
Page 4 of 4
Referring to Egypt's constitutional reforms passed in late March, which make it harder for opposition groups to organize politically and enshrined the use of military courts against civilians, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack noted criticisms, but added that "when you are able to at some point look back … you will see a general trend toward greater political reform."
"In the absence of outside pressure, I think the regime expects, with some justification, that it can get away with anything," says Human Rights Watch's Mr. Zarwan.
"In 2005, you had Condoleezza Rice coming here and making very strong statements about the need of Egypt to have democratic reforms; now the Americans might talk about these things in private with the government, but in public not at all."
All of this contrasts with official US comment on the trial of Syrian human rights activist Anwar al-Bunni, who was given five years in jail for his work revealing torture in that country. Mr. McCormack described his sentence as "yet another example of the Syrian regime's contempt for the universally recognized right of free expression of ideas, and its blatant attempts to silence and intimidate the Syrian people."
The younger Muslim Brotherhood members say Mubarak's regime is expecting that its latest round of arrests will cause the organization to back down, something that waves in the arrest in the past successfully accomplished, but all of them say that's not going to happen this time.
"The world has changed," says Ghuzlan. "There are so many ways to organize – blogging, e-mail groups, all allow our activists to be interactive with the people and reach out. There's no going back."
Blogger in danger?
Most of Egypt's political bloggers continue to publish, for now. But "Sandmonkey" – who described himself as "snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian [and] disgruntled" on his blog – said this week that he was hanging up his keyboard.
He said on his blog (sandmonkey.org) he'd noticed security agents on his street and clicking noises on his phone. "There has been too much heat around me lately," he said.
Whether Sandmonkey was in danger is hard to say; his family is linked to the ruling regime, and most bloggers who've been arrested were organizers of antiregime movements or embroiled in issues outside of blogging. But the sense of threat among bloggers has grown. "There is a wider security concern for Egypt's bloggers," says journalist Issandr El Amrani. Further arrests, he says, wouldn't surprise him.
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