By Mai Shams El-Din
CAIRO: Egyptian bloggers slammed the policies of the ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) on Monday after a call to publish blog posts criticizing the military rulers to break the fear barrier and media silence over what the bloggers referred to as the SCAF’s violations.
Over 250 blog posts were published by time of press, mostly condemning the SCAF’s policies and calling for the creation of a presidential council as an alternative to the ruling military council that has been at the helm since a popular revolt ousted former president Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11. Many have reiterated calls for a second revolution of anger planned for May 27.
Using NoSCAF as a hash tag, activists posted their blog posts on twitter calling for a million man march next Friday.
Blogger Wael Abbas was the first to call for the anti-SCAF blogging day, which was hailed by other bloggers and activists.
“Do not forget our anti-SCAF blogging day tomorrow to break the fear barrier to criticize the SCAF members,” Abbas said in a tweet on Sunday.
“No one will get three year-sentences alone,” he added referring to the case of blogger Maikel Nabil who was arrested by military police from his home in Ain Shams last March for blogging against the army.
Known for his controversial views regarding the state of Israel and other issues, Nabil blogged about what he calls the army’s conspiracy against the revolution, recounting torture allegations against the army in a post titled “The army and the people are not one hand.”
Nabil was charged with spreading false news and insulting the military institution. The false news included the use of violence by the army towards civilians and using the Egyptian Museum as a torture chamber. He was sentenced to three years.
Blogger Sara Sompongo author of “Manakesh” blog posed many questions about the SCAF’s political performance to date.
“Why did you arm riot police on Jan.28 when they ran out of weapons? Why are you too fast while trying Tahrir protesters and too slow while trying Mubarak?” she wondered.
Human rights activist Ramy Raouf and author of “Egyptian blog of Human Rights” urged the SCAF in his blog post to end military trials against civilians and to form an independent investigative body to investigate all violations of human rights done by members of the military police, trying those involved and making an official apology.
“SCAF has to stop using their social media website as means of communications and start launching an official website to communicate with the public,” he said.
Mona Seif, rights activists and member of “No to Military Trials for Civilians” recounted in a blog post on her blog “Ma3t” her memories of violations by military police during crackdowns on Tahrir protesters.
“If you were tried in front of a military court that is not supposed to interrogate you in the first place and in a couple of hours you received a suspended prison sentence then share with us your experience and write a blog post to counter media silence over violations by SCAF,” she said.
