31 Jan 2011 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
As protests in Egypt continue into their seventh day and police return to the streets, at least six journalists were arrested in Cairo earlier today. They were released after about three hours later, amidst unconfirmed reports that the United States had demanded their release. Equipment seized during the arrests was not returned to the correspondents. Al Jazeera reported that six of their journalists had been arrested, including Dan Nolan, the network’s United Arab Emirates’ correspondent. ‘Unsure if arrested or about to be deported. 6 of us held at army checkpoint outside Hilton hotel. Equipment seized too. #Egypt #jan25’, he tweeted just after midday BST on Monday. Activists also raised the alarm over the whereabouts of blogger Wael Ghonim, who works for Google Middle East. Ghonim has not been heard from since Thursday, 27 January. Only a day before, he voiced his anger over the government’s censorship of social media. Access to the internet has been mostly blocked, but activists and journalists have continued to get the word out via landlines and satellite phones.
31 Jan 2011 | Middle East and North Africa, News and features
As Egypt enters a seventh day of open revolt against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak, the country’s internet access continues to be largely shut down. That extended closure is one of the clearest signs that Mubarak still sees this as a fight he can win.
The longer the internet shutdown continues, the more and more mysterious the government’s thinking becomes. The last week has proven not only that the protesters don’t need Twitter and Facebook access to challenge the system but also that the world’s media don’t necessarily need it to bring details, images and even videos of this mass revolt to the world.
Each day brings new evidence of the complete futility of the gesture. Prominent local bloggers and online activists are simply calling friends overseas to tweet details on their behalf, the flood of journalists entering the country are almost all coming in armed with Thuraya satellite phones and Bgan receivers that enable you to get online from anywhere.
At this point, it’s likely that the main victim of the government’s online blockade will be the Egyptian economy. The country’s banks and stock market were shut down on Monday and the overall economic damage from the government’s decision to cut Egypt off from the world is something that will be hard to measure for a while.
Yesterday I met up with a prominent blogger and digital activist who blogs and tweets under the name of Sandmonkey. He gleefully told me that cracking the internet blockade was becoming an international cause célèbre for the international digital expression community. There were plans afoot, he said, for a group of “hardcore open source guys from Germany” to arrive here with satellite phones and all the equipment they needed to set up a local internet network completely beyond the reach of the authorities.
“They’re going to bypass the whole system,” he told me.
30 Jan 2011 | Asia and Pacific, China
Terms like Falun Gong, the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the names of high profile Chinese dissidents have long been censored in China, but now it’s the turn of country names.
A search on Weibo — a twitter-like service owned by Sina — for the words “Egypt” or “Tunisia” in Chinese returns the message: “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results cannot be shown.” The names of the countries in English are not blocked.
News wires are reporting that Sohu’s microblog has also blocked searches for Egypt.
The state news services, though, are covering the protests in both countries and regular searches on online Chinese search engines are not blocking the words.
This new and curious development follows recent anti-government protests in both countries. Riots in major Egyptian cities including Cairo and Alexandria have left more than 100 people dead. The unrest in Tunisia toppled the president. Protests are continuing over the choice of ministers for the interim government.
Global Voices Online is reporting that some Chinese bloggers have set up regular updates of Egyptian news on Weibo which comes up in searches for “Egypt” in English.
The censorship all seems a bit over the top. As one China-based western blogger observed: “Anything is possible, I suppose, but the very idea of Chinese activists being so inspired by the riots in Egypt that they’d try to implement the same tactics in China is so absurd it’s laughable.”
30 Jan 2011 | Middle East and North Africa, News and features
Index on Censorship is gravely concerned at the loss of life and injury to protesters on the sixth day of the popular uprising in Egypt. According to the most recent reports, at least 100 people have died and thousands have been injured since the protests against President Mubarak’s regime began last Tuesday.
The Egyptian people have lived under emergency laws for 30 years, with their rights to freedom of expression and assembly constrained. The mass protests across the country are an unprecedented demand for political reform and social justice, without parallel in the recent history of the country. We urge President Mubarak to restrain from using force and to respond to the Egyptian people’s demands with long overdue reform.
Index in Censorship also condemns attempts to control and disrupt the media and electronic communication. The government closed down al Jazeera’s broadcasts in Egypt today and has severed internet access. This is a move to deprive the Egyptian public of vital information and the ability to communicate with each other. Index would remind President Mubarak that Egypt’s own constitution guarantees the right to freedom of expression and assembly, and request that he lift the state of emergency that stands in the way of all democratic reform as a matter of urgency.
