Column:

From writing blogs to behind bars

By John Hendel

Published Feb. 27, 2007

LONDON — I keep a blog. I've kept it for about five years, actually, mainly because my girlfriend at the time had one and told me to. I was young and stupid. It made sense then, so I've kept up with this blog periodically.

I never thought a simple blog could land a person in jail, though. Last Thursday, a court in Alexandria, Egypt, sentenced a 22-year-old Egyptian man who goes by the name Kareem Amer to four years in prison for his blog writings. This guy wasn't crazy by any means. He simply favored secularism and women's rights and wrote a bit about it in his personal blog. Kareem was also an atheist, which does not go over particularly well in President Hosni Mubarak's Egypt.

Looking at Amer's record makes this obvious. He's been arrested before because of his blog in 2005. Apparently criticizing some riots over a play warrants 12 days in jail. A few months after that, his conservative professors at Al-Azhar University fell prey to criticism in his blog, and he got kicked out of college in early 2006.

I first learned about Kareem's case while working for the magazine Index on Censorship here in London and have looked into it rather excessively. This man was not all that different than the average student at MU, from what I gather, and expressed views similar to a lot of those my friends express. The case amazed me.

The government charged him with insulting Islam and defaming the president when officers took him in on Nov. 6. In the months since then, Amer has been in solitary confinement and might face up to 11 years in jail. Apparently the Egyptians aren't too happy with him, even on a common level. Dalia Ziada is a young human-rights activist and translator in Cairo who helped get Kareem a lawyer, wrote articles about him and campaigned tirelessly for his freedom, yet she told me that hundreds of young Egyptians send her insulting e-mails every day for her work.

I attended a protest at the Egyptian embassy last week as part of what the protestors called "Free Kareem Day." The plan included demonstrations in nine world cities, ranging from Rome to Paris to New York City. Sounds globally massive, though the London protest itself consisted of only about a dozen people, most of them graduate students from the London School of Economics. But waving signs such as "Free Kareem" and "Blogging is Not a Crime" and loudly chanting still triggers a reaction. Egyptian officials shut both their drapes and windows.

Others chanted and waved, but not me. I stayed for three hours as an observer. I chatted with the protestors about LSE's club night and the new Arcade Fire album as much as Kareem's case. The atmosphere of a protest allows for a surprising amount of chill humor, but I guess standing around for hours makes that necessary.

People often take freedom of expression as a given in the United States, especially in a media-crazy town like Columbia, but this young Egyptian college student received four years in prison for some stupid blog. Most people in Egypt aren't even outraged, according to some reports, despite the anger of the rest of the world. It's nonsense and shouldn't be ignored. One Associated Press reporter said he heard Kareem being hit in a truck right after hearing his verdict.

Take a brief break from getting wasted this weekend, and check out what's going on in the world for an hour or so. It can be sobering.