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Facebook + blogs = nervous Mid-East autocracies
Glance through Reporters Without Borders worldwide press freedom index over the years and you'll find the countries of the Middle East consistently languishing at the bottom. It's no surprise if you look at the leadership: Hosni Mabarak in Egypt has maintained the press control the country's endless state gave him. Muammar al Gadaffi in Libya uses the media to prop up his personality cult and even Morocco's forward thinking young king allowed a blogger to be jailed recently for allegedly insulting him in a critical posting.
But it is exactly bloggers and social networking sites like Facebook that may now be denting their autocratic armour. Egypt forbids more than five people to assemble at any time, thus making protests and political meeting all but impossible. But on Facebook, where more than a half million Egyptians have accounts, there are no limits.
Syrians massively join Facebook
Just last April, a youth group used the site to mobilize 80,000 supporters to protest the rising cost of bread. The Egyptian political activist Ahmed Maher started a Facebook group called the April 6 Movement which successfully organized a nationwide strike against rising commodity prices. This success came at price when Maher was arrested.
"The first time was right before the strike. I was arrested and tortured for two days. They were torturing me to get my Facebook password and the names of the other participants in my group. But I didn't give them the information."
Maher fully intends to continue to use Facebook again to organize more protests. The Egyptian government is mulling over banning the site. Bans are common throughout the Middle East. Syria has blocked Facebook and Tunisia just blocked Facebook and then unblocked it within a weeks.
Despite this, the number of Syrians joining Facebook has risen dramatically as savvy web users turn to proxies to redirect their access to the site.
Alexandra Sandels of the Middle East media watchdog Menassat group says the Internet is a facilitator of political change in the Middle East, but warns:
"You still need moderators who take the movement off the Internet and into the streets. You can rally for your cause from the comfort of your couch but one must not fall into the trap of ‘couch activism'. We sit on our couches. We read blog after blog, join Facebook group after Facebook group. But how many of us actually take to the streets in the end?"
Sandels feels the Internet still needs to prove that it can bring about meaningful political movements.
Blogging in Riyadh
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may block over 400,000 websites but Ahmed Al-Omran's blog ‘Saudi Jeans' is not one of them. The 24 year old student in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh still manages write about press freedom and social change and has followers in the Kingdom and in Europe and the US, leading to "lively debate" he snickers.
Al-Omran feels blogging in English, and not Arabic, lets him fly under the radar, a safety net his friend and fellow blogger Fouad al-Farhan did not have. Late last year he was arrested and held without charge for 4 months. When pressed Al-Omran admits his friend's sudden incarceration make him nervous, but he says it's worth it:
"I think that the issues that I'm writing about, for the cause I'm fighting for, it's worth taking that kind of risk because [he sighs] we love this country and want it change. And I think the risk is worth taking." Internet sites may be blocked but they do have the advantage of existing in networked servers, often outside the borders of the country to where the site domestic press is easily controlled.
Tags:
Arab,
blog,
blogger,
facebook,
Menassat,
Middle East,
Saudi Arabia,
Saudi Jeans,
Syria
Derek Blackadder,
21-09-2008
- Canada
My experiences of using Facebook for organizing purposes:
http://ourtimes.ca/Talking/article_87.php
David Berridge,
21-09-2008
- Canada
It is surprising that domestic counter-intelligence security services to not join into these websites in order to infiltrate bloggers, and discover the organizational networks of these protests. This would make sites such as Facebook a tool to control social protest and potential political dissent within a restrictive society. The internet can become a political two way street.
Hiram,
21-09-2008
- USA
"worldwide press freedom"....Why should countries such as Egypt and Syria support the "Freedom of the Press"? News reporters are biased by their own belief systems and with their biases they cause harm by putting out facts that distort the truth or stretch the "truth." Journalists need to be more critical of their own belief system and just write the facts of the incident. For example, a reporter wrote in "RNW journalist arrested in Israel" that a "Radio Netherlands Worldwide journalist" was arrested; when in fact she was not arrested but only detained. The reporter wrote "Shortly after arriving at Tel Aviv airport on a KLM flight, she was arrested by two police officers and detained in a cell close to the airport." The detained reporter was not charged with a crime and the reporter did not go before a magistrate to be charged. The reporter was detained until she could be returned to the Netherlands. The word "arrest" implies a stronger meaning than "detained." (The report might have stated: An RNW, news reporter was stopped by two police officers and "detained" close to the airport because she tried to enter the country with an unauthorized passport.) In this case, the news reporter who wrote the article chose the word "arrest." Why? Who knows. Maybe both reporters were friends and the writer of the report wanted to standup for her friend and fellow news reporter by stretching the "truth" just a bit. Maybe she and her friend had an agenda to show Israel in a negative manner. It really didn't make a difference anyway. What it showed was reporters are human and governments like Egypt and Syria (Israel) know the facts will be distorted by the reporters, who enter their countries, to suit their political agendas. They, "nervous Mid-East autocracies," have a right not to trust reporters. Reporters, who have no news ethics, cause harm to innocent people in several ways by stretching the "Truth" to fit their agenda.
