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.