There’s a petition to help Karim Amer at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/158/709/068 .
For those who haven’t followed the case, Karim, a young Egyptian blogger, was charged with publishing material ‘critical of Islam’ and Egypt's President Hosni Mubarek. He was imprisoned for four years, and claims that, while imprisoned, he has been beaten at least twice under the supervision of a prison officer.
As the folk behind the petition point out, one of the luxuries of the internet is that it's a forum of expression available to anyone with some cheapish, basic technology to hand. And in this forum, anyone should be able to contribute to a discussion and speak their mind. Karim just exercised what is universally agreed is a right to peaceful freedom of expression - a right all decent governments have committed themselves by various international agreements to upholding.
If the advantages of the internet are to be used to their fullest, we need to speak up for folk like Karim, and stop powerful interest groups from extending their ‘right’ to be beyond jokes, honest criticism and other means by which ordinary folk can cut such loons down to size.
10 years ago
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