CAIRO: Amid increased crackdowns on Internet dissidence and the dissemination of disturbing videos alleging police torture, several activists, bloggers, human rights lawyers, and journalists are calling for an anti-torture campaign.
At a four-hour meeting at the offices of the Association for Human Rights Legal Aid on Saturday the activists mapped out a strategy for the campaign.
Divided into two sessions, the first part of the forum featured speeches of a number of experienced lawyers and activists, including Ahmed Seif of the Hisham Mubarak Center, who offered his advice on documentation of torture cases and implications of the press law for journalists reporting on sensitive topics.
Steering members of the anti-torture campaign also decided to organize awareness rallies and protests every year on Jan. 25 marking Egyptian Police Day and on Jun. 26 highlighting the International Day against Torture.
A brainstorming discussion session then followed featuring prominent bloggers such as Hossam El-Hamalawy and Manaa Abdel Fattah suggesting ways to combat systematic crackdowns and abuse on the Egyptian blogging community.
“It was a great honor for me to meet every single participant in tonight’s forum. The small audience was a microcosm of a growing rich pluralistic blogosphere. Whether religious or secular, veiled or unveiled, Copt or Muslim, or leftist or Islamist, everyone came together for one reason: to rid Egypt of its police torture epidemic, El-Hamalawy stated on his widely popular blog arabawy.net.
The attendees also discussed holding a workshop on ‘cyber-security’, how to blog anonymously, and how to avoid so-called ‘hackers’ accessing personal information of the bloggers.
Even an entry in the free editable online encyclopedia Wikipedia, titled ‘Torture in Egypt’ featuring names and photos of Egyptian police officers previously involved in torture of activists was suggested.
Recent police arrests have put the Egyptian blogging community in the spotlight.
On Feb. 22, student blogger Kareem Amer was sentenced by an Alexandria court to four years in prison for defaming Islam and President Hosni Mubarak on his blog.
Last week, the head judge at the Alexandria High Court of Appeals, Judge Abdel Fattah Mourad, reportedly called for the blocking of 21 Egyptian blogs and websites claiming “they tarnish the reputation of the Egyptian government and insult the Egyptian president .
The next meeting for the anti-torture campaign will be held at on March 25 at the Association for Human Rights Legal Aid in Talaat Harb Square.
