In the summer of 2008, I survived an assassination attempt in Iraq. My “crime” was that I am “an enemy of God,” a promoter of concepts that “offended” religion. My crime was writing articles calling for the protection of religious minorities and calling for the rights of women, children, and homosexuals in Iraq, urging people to protect innocent people from brutal attacks by armed militias.

My principles forced me to live in harsh humanitarian conditions as I search for a safe haven, and as many of the countries which adopted human rights protection, bloggers from Iraq are not in the ranks of immediate threat, and I am thus forced to stay in search for protection.

We pay a high price in order to convey the reality of death and destruction in Iraq and to defend freedom of expression. While I live the reality of my search for a lifeline away from a death sentence awaiting me in my home country, I receive no means of protection and every day I come closer to face death again because of the programs forcing Iraqis to return, adopted by several European countries through treaties the Iraqi government put fourth.

Through my continued search for safety, I think of my conditions and imagine the reality of my fellow bloggers inside Iraq, and I know in my heart that they have a more difficult reality and they face more risks as every day the challenging for blogging are bigger and more dangerous.

A few months ago an Iraqi female Ophthalmologist disappeared on her way back to Iraq. She was on her way to participate in a project to help Iraqi children with a delegation of medical professionals from Jordan, an informant for the Iraqi border police accused her of being a blogger known as “Hiba Shemary” who blogs under the false name of the daughter of the Baath. After inspection of her personal laptop, several articles were found to support the charge, and she was arrested on charges of promoting terrorism. Me and many Iraqi bloggers believe in the new Iraq and reject the return of the past and we disagree with her and her beliefs, but the truth is that she was not more than a doctor who promotes ideas and opposition to the government of Iraq through a personal blog, which had limited followers, obviously not enough to be regarded as a promoter of terrorism in a time when the government allows many satellite and radio channels, the kind that would have allowed here to potentially reach millions of people, so the claim against her remains ridiculous.

At the beginning of March, a known Iraqi activist in the field of human rights, who operates on the Internet, specifically on Facebook, received 2 death threats. The first accused her of being a Western agent and is anti-Islam (the same charges I received) because she promote the rights of women and children, freedom of education and discusses the failure of the educational system in Iraq. The second accused her of insulting Iraqi religious figures, threatening her not to cross the line against the characters of religions working in politics. She was forced to reduce her activities because she still lives in Iraq.

In another incident, a young Iraqi blogger living in upscale Shiite areas of Baghdad was attacked by the security forces and intimidation because of his support for the young Iraqi blog which promotes freedom of expression, the army officer who searched the room for evidence of relation to any potential threat posed against the officer and his troops. Asked about the many books in the young boy’s room, are they school books? When the answer was that it’s novels by Marquez… the officer asked “Marx? Are you a communist?”

During the recent elections, bloggers carried a camera and took pictures documenting the elections and whenever he was arrested by a police officer he or she would tell them that they’re working for a channel or a newspaper, that follow to one of the sectarian groups depending on what the soldier would like to hear, in order not to be arrested on charges of “terrorism.” Other bloggers carried their phones, posting into sites like Twitter, moving between different houses in order to prevent anyone from detecting their signals. Especially since a number of religious parties had made precautions against repeating the “new media” experience of the Iranian elections with bloggers and activists.

Political assassinations with silencers, explosive adhesive bombs, kidnapping, arrests for unknown reasons, hacking Iraqi sites, psychological and intellectual warfare: this is the reality of the Iraqi bloggers.

Any believer in freedom of expression, warrior against corruption, observers of the reality of political and financial corruption and advocate for reform and national reconciliation, fighters for the rights of minorities and other persecuted groups… anyone with the objectives of turning away from religious totalitarian regimes and ideology will face the hard reality that Iraqi bloggers continue to suffer through.

I asked a number of Iraqi bloggers about how to describe blogging in Iraq, they said, primitive, isolated, like a small child lacking guidance, a severe shortage of support. We are not recognized or treated like “media men,” we are neglected, forgotten, ignored.
The best description of Iraqi blogging came from a veteran blogger who describes himself as an unarmed Iraqi soldier alone in a battlefield.

Iraqi bloggers learned blogging without a teacher, they do not get support or training from any person. They work in a country governed by customs, traditions and religion.

They are working in conditions of bad electricity to run the computer, using very bad Internet services, forced to walk long distances to reach the Internet café to publish his blog. Iraqi bloggers are working in complete secrecy because of the eyes that lurk in the Internet cafe from religious groups and parties. If we write in support of the new Iraq, we are an agent of the occupation. If we blog criticizing the Iraqi reality, we are an agent of terrorism. We don’t have any rights, it’s like we are unknown.

Iraq is a country living a conflict, it is in the middle of many powers trying to force their views to shape it close to the image that serves their interests.

Bloggers are people suffering from the frustration of political reality and the intellectual life in Iraq, they lack of any areas of expression in the country, their world is filled with concrete walls and subunits of security, inspection and shared by groups and parties.

Bloggers want to convey their vision of the nation, a vision we may like or not, but in the end a person wants to express himself and say a word in a peaceful manner, and has the right to work without fear or intimidation.

Unfortunately, through my experience that I live today I discovered that many of those who were outside Iraq and encourage us to express ourselves and convey images of a new Iraq, were at the forefront of abandoning me and others in my position. Today I face the risk of death or displacement, I risk my life, but I took to myself to fight in my remaining days to prevent a repetition of tragedies with other Iraqi bloggers who face the realities of working in an atmosphere of danger.

Help Iraqi bloggers, with support and protecting. Do not leave us fighting windmills alone, because we will fight like heroes and die without trace. Help us leave a trace in this struggle.

“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign”
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859.

But sovereign are we, over our blogs and the contents and comments therein?

We are bloggers. We want freedom. But who are we?

Are we mere individuals, exercising our right to free speech? Or serving in a larger reserve corps of citizen journalists, doing the menial chores mainstream fleet streeters balk at, breaking community stories and spotlighting abuses that may otherwise be ignored?

If the latter, we are all scribes. But while our bold brethren scribing for broadsheets a enjoy the protection of law for work, property and ideas,  we tend tend to fall inebriated between the barstool of individualism and the wooden pew  of public reach. Even though  we may be genuine aggregators and investigators of information, we are not offered the  protection afforded to journalists, nor privy to the same outrage when one of us is hoisted out of the public sphere and into an anonymous cell.

If the former, we are individuals who generate, in part opine and pontificate  and in others prevaricate. But in doing so, we meet the basic human need of self-expression and ask permission for the right to exercise freedom of expression. Thinkers like Stuart Mill have argued for liberty on the premise that it increases happiness. As beings capable of abstraction, rationalization and expression, the life of a pebble is not for humans. The artisan hews, the painter paints, the poet sculpts reality out of verse, thus so should a blogger be permitted to throw together prose.

If either of the narratives above describes us, we shall call it our own, for both  present obvious pressing arguments for blogger rights – the first as foot soldiers for transparency, the second as mere individuals who wish to be individual.

But both narratives also imply a sense of duty, responsibility and measure. One we ignore at our peril.

If we are to be journalists, we must then be very good journalists because we are our own editors, sources and type-setters. We can not throw around accusations on whim and cast doubts on fancy, because we then fail our cause and cannot in good faith ask for protection afforded to accredited and audited correspondents.

If we are to be mere individuals, we must recall that the right to swing our fists – and opinions-  ends at the tip of our subjects’ noses. Salaciousness, fabrication and mendacity are not pleasing attributes, be they evident in real life or the blogosphere.

The world does not yet know how to treat us because we don’t yet know who we are- journalists, individuals, citizens or all three.

But of two points we can be sure.

One,  bloggers the world over have been invaluable in offering perspective, insight, indignation  and indeed new information that has held the world’s attention and created pressure for constructive change – in political as well as corporate matters. From Egypt to Iran, Dell to Etisalat, blogging  has  represented  a democratization of information that, while may not always be correct, offers empowerment often translating into positive action.

Second, freedom of expression is the flimsy catch preventing functioning societies falling into autocratic tyranny. For that purpose alone, it should be encouraged. We  will not stand up and insist that every single factual nuance ever noted by us is accurate and cross-checked as we’d ideally want. But we will, proudly and vehemently, insist on our right to expression -not merely as bloggers but as humans- without the fear of persecution. So let the first blogger who dies in prison be the last. In fact, expand that remit. Let the next person who dies in prison for  exercising expression in any form be the very last. Ever.

For more information on blogger rights, it may be helpful to refer to http://news.cnet.com/Bloggers-have-rights-too/2010-1034_3-5632544.html

Hisham Wyne

The author has writing pretensions, and dabbles in social commentary, political analyses and cultural waffle. He calls himself an amateur armchair sociologist. You can find some of his scribblings on www.hishamwyne.wordpress.com and www.huffingtonpost.com/hisham-wyne, and can find him on twitter @HishamWyne.

In my son’s children’s prayer book, there is a sentence that has always baffled me: “…bestow Thou freedom while in a state of childhood…”

What is meant with this phrase and what is “freedom”? The freedom to get naked and play in the dirt? The freedom to eat rice with your hands and then throw half of it on the floor? The freedom to roll around in the grass without a worry?

In an incredibly inspiring and unlikely speech at Harvard University, author JK Rowling recently shed some light on the subject for me, as she spoke about the value of crisis or the “fringe benefits of failure” as she put it. She described, that when she hit rock bottom in her life; when all her fears of poverty and failure had come true, there was nowhere else for her to hide. It was in her absolute outer poverty that she discovered the true nobility of who she really was. There were no more material or worldly possessions, titles or “hype” to hide behind. She was “free” to be who she really was and rock bottom provided a solid foundation for her to build and meet her highest destiny.

So on one level freedom is a state of mind and means to be free from “earthly things”. It can mean detachment from societal or cultural expectations, from material belongings, ego and idle fancy. And curiously, it is often in a state of outer “poverty” and “restriction” that we can find our true inner freedom.

In the “West” we often think of ourselves as already being free. We look at places such as Iran and think because freedom of speech is restricted, basic human rights are abused, the internet is censored and satellite programs are intercepted, we can call ourselves free and that this freedom is something worth “bringing” to places like Iran. Sure it is. But in the process of pushing these valuable societal freedoms, we often forget to humble ourselves before the “inner freedoms” that so many people in places like Iran have already achieved.

It isn’t our societal freedoms, but what we do with our societal freedoms that often points to our deep, underlying enslavement to self and ego. Those whose voices are silenced and who perish in the prisons of the Middle-East and elsewhere are often far more “liberated” than we are!

Inner freedom can be absolute, societal freedom can only ever be relative. Because if I infringe on your freedom by expressing my own, I am hurting not only you, but the greater organism of life that encompasses me. Indulge me for a second and visualize this organism as a piano: In parts of the Middle East, freedom of speech and freedom of expression are so bad that there are only three of four notes that are allowed to be played. The rest are silenced and muted for life. The tunes that emerge from this piano are dull and depressing. The piano as a whole is deprived.

In the “West”, every note is “free”; free to play and bang and sound whenever it wants. As a result it sounds like my one-year old, when he bangs on his keyboard. It’s a cacophony of brutal notes, each trying to sound louder than the other and each trying to win ascendancy over the other. It is equally dull and depressing – and equally deprived of meeting its highest potential.

What we need for our own limitless spiritual freedom to be realized is a situation where each note can find its own best expression and sound at precisely the right time, without infringing on another’s turn and without sacrificing its own beauty. None of us can ever be heard unless we find that balance of a beautiful symphony and come together in a dance of notes. That is true unity and freedom. It is only when we find that balance, that each of us will find his or her best expression and that diversity will reach its highest expression.

So as we strive for greater societal freedoms in the “East” and for a greater understanding of our spiritual freedoms and responsibilities in the “West”, let us embrace that we need to learn from each other to realize ultimate freedom for our ever-advancing human civilization.

Adnan and Emin were first arrested last year on the 8th of July.

There is an update of the case available on Global Voices Online, which includes pictures of a demonstration in London, as well as a list of human rights organizations condemning their imprisonment.

Below is a video of the London demonstration which took place this past Friday in front of the Azerbaijani Embassy:

Here’s how you can help in the form of a video petition:

Take a camera

Introduce yourself: My name is … I am from…

Send your support message to Adnan and Emin

Finish your video with the words: I call on Azerbaijani government to end this lawlessness.

Upload this video to Youtube with subject “Support to Adnan and Emin”

Send the link of the video to ol.azerbaijan@gmail.com

For more information, please visit the profiles of the victims on Wikipedia:
- Emin Milli
- Adnan Hajizade

Please show your support for these innocent victims of this grave human rights violation:

Another rally happened in Bern, Switzerland to support Kareem.Here are the photos.

If you tweet this news, please remember to use the #FreeKareem hashtag.

Kareem is a young Egyptian blogger who was only 22 years old when he was sentenced to 4 years in prison by the Egyptian government for criticizing Islam and the President of Egypt on a personal blog. Kareem was threatened and harassed consistently for his writing, and was previously arrested prior to his sentence, all of which were attempts to silence his opinions which he should be free to express. He challenged the Egyptian government and the self-proclaimed “scholars” at the Al Azhar religious institution which he attended (and was eventually expelled from) by criticizing them and their policies. His latest arrest was on the 6th of November, 2006, and he has been in prison ever since that date. Months after that, while he was imprisoned without charges, he was formally sentenced to 4 years in prison on the 22nd of February, 2007, causing him to be the first blogger in the Arab world to be sentenced officially by a court for his blog.

Since the 6th of November, 2006, on the day of his arrest, I created FreeKareem.org to try and secure his release, and dozens of volunteers soon piled up to help out, making the campaign one of the most visible campaigns for a blogger in the world. Despite that, and the outrage expressed by thousands of people worldwide, including government officials and MPs who shamed Egypt and the Egyptian government for this gross human rights violation, the Egyptian authorities failed to acknowledge this mistake. We created many campaigns over the years to help keep the mainstream media interested in covering this story, knowing that this is what the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak is scared of most. We did this through worldwide simultaneous rallies which took place in at least 15 major cities around the world, the “Flood the Jail with Mail” campaign, other letter campaigns throughout the year, #FreeKareem Twitter days, creating Free Kareem events in schools and universities around the world, involving musicians and artists, and much more.

This certainly worked in terms of raising awareness and mainstream media attention, which went wild, everywhere from the Washington Post to Czech TV. Staff at the Egyptian consulates and embassies around all these countries were certainly aware and felt the pressure multiple times throughout every year. They heard us say: We are aware of the mistake the Egyptian government has caused and we are here until you CORRECT IT. They never did. 1080 days later and they never did.

Kareem shouldn’t be forgotten. He is not merely an example of what could go wrong for bloggers under oppressive regimes. He is a human being and my friend who deserves his freedom. Please help me free him, and communicate this message to the Egyptian government or journalists around the world, and perhaps to the U.S government that continues to fund this regime out of self-interest at the expense of basic human rights.

Kareem must be freed.

For more information please visit www.FreeKareem.org and do your part to spread the word. If you Tweet this news, please use the hashtag #FreeKareem.

In order to aid the Free Kareem Campaign, Bureaucrash and other liberty activists in Washington, DC will be holding a Free Kareem rally from 12pm – 1pm, November 6th at the following location:

Egyptian Cultural & Educational Bureau

1303 New Hampshire Avenue NW

Washington DC 20036

Map:

View Larger Map

Please join us to show your solidarity for individual liberty and free speech. If you would like to network with people attending the rally please view the following websites:

Facebook Event

Social Bureaucrash

On the same day, there will be a rally held for Kareem in front of the Egyptian Embassy in Bern, Switzerland. A note from the organizer:

For three years now, Kareem Amer has been in prison for expressing his opinions. Although the authorities customarily grant a release request after three quarters of a prisoner’s sentence, Kareem’s hearing has been repeatedly postponed and is still pending.

In the West and especially in Switzerland, we enjoy free speech. That is why we are organizing a rally in front of the Embassy of Egypt, Elfenauweg 61, in Bern, on Friday, November 6, 2009, between 11 and 11:30 a.m.

Map:

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If you are in Bern or in Washington DC, please consider attending these rallies. It is important that we continue the struggle for free speech in the Middle East, and indeed, this can only be achieved with help from around the world.