Bloggers in trouble

It seems that this blogging business is for real, and some regimes are starting to take it seriously.

A Bahraini blogger, Ali Abdulemam, and two of his fellow moderators of BahrainOnline.org, Hussain Yousif, and Mohammed Al Mousawi, have been detained by the Bahraini authorities a few days ago. It seems they're being detained for their moderation activities, not their blogging though.

In Iran, blogging is a apparently becoming the state enemy number one. They've detained two bloggers there, Mojtaba Saminejad and Arash Sigarchi.

A few days after I started blogging, a cool Egyptian journalist emailed me asking me about what I think of blogging, and how important it is in reforming the Middle East. I replied saying that I didn't think it was of much importance, and I still don't actually. But apparently, the Arab regimes do not agree with me!

Mohammed, over at Digressing, points out that with regards to the Bahrainis, these are not the first Arabs to be arrested because of online speech. He points out that there have also been others who have been arrested and sometimes sentenced for publishing undesired material through the Internet. Ashraf Ibrahim, and Shohdy Naguib Surur from Egypt. Haitham Keteish, Mohammed Keteish, AbdelRahman ElShogoury, and four others from Syria. Zoheir Yehiawy, along with 20 others in Tunisia.

Of those, the only one I knew of and was following his story at the time (2002), was Shohdy Surur. His story is interesting, in that its different from the typical, "guy/gal get arrested because they're publishing stuff against the regime".

Shohdy was commemorating his late father Naguib Surur, by publishing his poems and plays on the Internet. Shohdy, as far as I know, is no activist against the regime, and he used to work as the website designer and maintainer of AlAhram Weekly state-owned newspaper.

The reason for his arrest was one of his father's poems, Kuss-ummiyyat [really, adult content here]. This poem is really something. You'll find him describing Egypt as the country of whores, and insisting that he is an Egyptian ibn Egyptian who loves Egypt and the Nile. In short, Naguib Surur was a poet, a playwright, actor, and a critic who became very frustrated with the Egyptian state of being, at one point suffering from severe depression leading him to spend sometime in the mental hospital.

Should that remind me of Alaa ElAswany's Neeran Sadeeka's main character whom I've connected with his views about Egypt before, and who ended up in the mental hospital? hmmm. Similar views I would say. Dissapointment, anger, disassociation, ridicule.

The poem abusively (and sexually I guess, if that's the right word) criticises the state of Egypt and Egyptians, but under the presidents' who ruled during Surur's life, Nasser and Sadat, not Mubarak.

It happens that this was one of Naguib's poems that Shohdy was commemorating. Shohdy is in Moscow now (considering that he's half Russian from his mother's side), and gladly, did not serve the one-year jail time he was sentenced to, and he has his father's work up on the Internet again for everyone to read.

Egypt's State Security has a department for online/Internet investigations now, and I think they're pretty competent too (I bet they got their training over at the FB of I). So bloggers beware, you can never tell why you'll be arrested.

A thought might cross the mind of a few, wondering if I should be worried, being a blogger and all, of getting arrested!!! Ofcourse not. Not out of courage, certainly not --there's nothing courageous about getting arrested in Egypt. And not because they won't find me as I'm only revealing my first name. I know they can easily track where I am if they want to.

I'm not worried, because Egypt is changing.. freedoms are opening up.. freedom of speech, opinion, expression, democracy, and free elections are blossoming in Egypt (didn't you hear Mubarak's latest decision). Hehe.. ok, that's a cheap lie. What am I drinking?!

I don't know why I'm making this to be about me, I guess this is the whole point of this blog, eh :-) Anyway, I guess its obvious why I wouldn't be worried. There's simply nothing valuable in what I write here, and this blog looks pretty politically-correct so far. Plus, I'm definetely not as talented as Naguib Surur.