EDITORIAL 11 APRIL 2011 The Egyptian army shows itself blind to justice - jailing a blogger for three years for exercising his right to freedom of speach. The army have acted to silence this blogger for publishing uncomfortable truths about the military's actions against peaceful protesters and the torture of women and political activists. Nabil himself was unfortunate enough to have been one of those detained by the army early in February when he alleges he was beaten and sexually harassed. He was not afraid to write about his experience and that of others and courageously put his name to a blog entry titled "The Army And The People Were Never One Hand" on 8 March. In the early hours of 28 March Military Intelligence turned up at his home and arrested him on a charge of "insulting the military establishment" and "spreading false information." His arrest and subsequent imprisonment is a blatant attempt to intimidate other Egyptian bloggers and websites into a subservient silence. We doubt it will be successful. The current government and the generals who at the heart of it, have shown themselves clearly unfit to lead the country on the path to democracy, and GayEgypt.com supports those calling on further peaceful protests calling for the prosecution of all those implicit in crimes against the people both before and after 11 February. We also join them in their call for the resignation of the Minister of Defence and Army Chief-of-Staff, Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi. The jailed blogger, 26 year old Maikel Nabil Sanad, was not even able to have his lawyer present at his sentence on 11 April. It was one of the latest and clearest instances of the abuse of the basic right to freedom of speech by the military. Major General Mohammed al-Assar subsequently advised one Egyptian TV channel that "the problem is in questioning the intentions (of the army)." ( Associated Press 11 April 2011 ) On March 22, the army went further than mere advice. General Etman sent a written instruction to several newspaper editors telling them "not to publish any articles or pictures about the Egyptain armed forces except after consulting Military Intelligence. The latter apparently being more "competent" than the press in deciding how "to protect the safety of the nation." A photocopy of this letter was authenticated by Human Rights Watch. I am sure that the response of many many activists, all of us inside Egypt, and presumably liable to the same "military justice" as Mikael, is that we should and will continue to question the intentions of the army, and that we now feel that a substantive part of it would like to see a continuation of Mubarak's regime, the only substantive difference being the absence of its former figurehead. The old regime was a dragon with many heads, and many of these come from within the army high command, with their hands still on the loot from their own ill-gained share of the military-industrial complex. Visit the Free Maiekel Nabil Facebook page New York Times Article on The Case. WARNING: The new/old military government in Egypt may be monitoring IP addresses on our own and other websites and possibly also blocking them and also possibly emails. You should be careful about revealing personal information and it might be preferable to use proxy servers. Within eight hours of posting a critical editorial on the military regime on 11 April (see above), all our forums had apparently dissappeared when we attempted to access them from any of our own computers here in Egypt. However after some difficulty we were able to access them by various other means . We are not sure yet the precise cause and whether this may be another attempt to silence freedom of speech. We have asked the hosting company to investigate but we are glad that this page hasn't been vulnerable to whatever made the forums more difficult to access. In the meantime we apologize for any inconvenience for anyone who finds that their access has been blocked and are working hard to restore the forums for all users. According to our correspondents, we understand that the website forums are up and running 100 per cent in the U.K., Canada, Austria and probably most countries, but there is still (as of 14 April) a more limited (less than 100 per cent) access to them inside Egypt. This indicates that the forums themselves or various IP addresses may have been blocked or controlled by the Egyptian Government but we cannot yet confirm whether this is definitely the case but hope to have more information shortly. Please email us if you are having any difficulty accessing forums at alisdare1@yahoo.co.uk |