A few days ago, news broke out that Security officers of the Borj al Arab prison broke into Kareem’s prison cell and took away his letters of support, which Kareem has been receiving from around the world.

They also confiscated his notebook, where he keeps his personal thoughts in an attempt to cope with his unjust imprisonment. They have done this for no apparent reason than to abuse a free speech advocate who remains imprisoned since November 6, 2006 merely for his blog posts.

This is not the first time it has happened. In August 2008, some of Kareem’s books and other reading materials were arbitrarily confiscated.

We call upon you to take action: Flood the Jail with Mail, by sending letters of support directly to Kareem!

For Kareem’s address and to read more about this campaign, please visit this page.

We need your support! Please circulate this news and get others involved! Don’t let Kareem go through this alone.

You can view and download the .pdf file here: OR318

Brief presentation of the March 18 Movement by its co-founder at the TH!NK3 launch event in Brussels, 23 March 2010.

You can fine more of her artwork on her blog here.

Follow her on Twitter: @ZinaSaunders

Click on thumbnails for full size.

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.

After three years of being a regular blogger, I was flabbergasted when I received a comment on one of my posts that threatened to sue me for an exorbitant amount of money, dangled the prospect of jail over my head and slyly hinted at taking my passport away so as to prevent me from travelling to the UK for my education.

After a whole host of events too tedious to describe, I was forced by a multitude of circumstances to pull down the post permanently from my blog. I even had to go so far as to change my moniker on that blog (wherein I was already writing under a pseudonym) because the threats – although thankfully by this time completely hollow – kept coming. As my original pseudonym was alarmingly close to my real name, it had to go.

The question begs to be asked… what had I done that was so reprehensible?

In a wrap of an event, I dared say I did not like a person’s choice of apparel.

Clichéd perhaps, but I whole-heartedly abide by the quote found in the book The Friends of Voltaire (1906), written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall under the pseudonym S.G. Tallentyre: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Freedom of speech, to me, signifies being able to say what you think without the fear of repercussions. It means allowing people to opine unreservedly without them indulging in morbid thoughts of what can befall them if they do so. Society seems to be moving back to Tudor times when it was wholly possible to have your head lopped off for not agreeing with the king. That scares me.

While I am a supporter of preventing the spread of abject lies, why should bloggers be penalized for being truthful and accurate? I firmly believe that to be a trusted blogger, you cannot lie in your posts. Because of the two-way and immediate conversation available to bloggers and their readers, there lies the possibility of a near-immediate response to any mistakes made in the blog post.

Was I a coward for removing the post from my blog? Perhaps. Should I have fought for the right to say what I thought, as it harmed no one and was most definitely not defamatory? Many might think so. Do I think twice before posting something on a blog now? Yes, however harmless I think it might be.

The most important question, in my opinion, remains: will I ever put that blog post online again? Yes. But only when I hold the power in my hands. Because sadly, right now it’s all about who has the power to exercise free speech as opposed to who has the right to.

Devina Divecha alternates between living in muggy Sheffield and hot Dubai, despite originally hailing from rainy Bombay. If she’s not talking, she’s advocating the right to talk. It just works better this way. Read more at http://devinadivecha.wordpress.com/ and predictably enough, her Twitter handle is @DevinaDivecha

In our advocacy for freedom to express our ideas, we should also exercise caution. Because with freedom (in any form) comes responsibility (ours) and respect (for others).

I strongly believe in freedom of speech but I also understand that for all of us to enjoy freedom, there must be guidelines that we set ourselves – not to rabble rouse but to win people over with thought, restraint and sane arguments.

I believe that while passion helps us promote a cause, respect for others would help us understand why they do not agree with us. Another sane point of view, given freely, without abuse, would go further to helping a cause (whatever it might be).

I believe that freedom to express should come after we have explored, understood, and distilled our thoughts before expression.

I believe that keeping an open mind is the best expression of freedom.

I’ve always been a strong supporter of censorship, primarily because people don’t understand that with freedom comes responsibility. I have also believed that censorship was created for the good of society.

But when those controlling the content are responsible for societal turmoil, censorship turns into tyranny.

Many nations in the Middle East control Internet content, and in many ways it’s not wrong. But when a YouTube video or a blog post is the cause of deportation, or in  Omid Reza’s case, legal murder, a line needs to be drawn.

In 1857, there was an Indian Military Revolt that took place under the British Raj that is widely debated as the first organized revolution against the British government. This resulted in the British government creating laws to curb the freedom of the people in India, which was a catalyst to a chain reaction of Mutiny throughout.

Just like that, if revolution has taken a new form online, it is bound to be shot down over and over again. And just like any revolution in the past, it doesn’t die on punishment. As a matter of fact it escalates.

Those who control content anywhere, be it online, broadcast or print, must know that their primary function is the good of the society. And if they themselves are the biggest problem of the society, they won’t survive for long.

But you say it anyway.

You start addressing something that is so wrong, that you have no choice but to stand up and talk about it, even though you don’t want to.

But you say it anyway.

You know these things you say may get you into a whole lot of trouble. Trouble you would prefer to stay out of.

But you say it anyway.

The fact is in life, we are forced to do things we don’t want to do, but do them despite our negative feelings. Because the NOT doing these things is so much worse. Because any rational person knows that watching something so terrible and wrong and not doing anything about is just as bad as doing the monstrosity itself. And though you are not contributing to this monstrosity, you do become an integral part of its existence. One of the many cogs that make the mechanics of this monster move on.

We look onto this mechanical monster and say to ourselves “That is terrible. But if I leave it alone it won’t harm me.” And we move on with our lives. Keeping a faint memory of something that monster did, and how terrible it was. And then we take comfort that it didn’t hurt us. “We did the right thing.” Then one day we find somebody we love being gnawed and crushed by this monster’s teeth and cogs. And that is when we realize that we have become one of the cogs that keeps this machine alive. We are now one of the cogs that are crushing our loved ones.

Step back and take a look at that picture. Tell me that is a picture you would want to see. Tell me that stepping up to that monster is something you actually look forward to. You don’t.
But you will summon up the courage to walk up to that monster, and think up what you have to say. And though you know the monster may very well crush you.

But you say it anyway.

People usually ask me what my online name means, “what does Fangpyre mean? And I usually shy away from explaining what it means thinking people may not understand it to its full extent. But today, I’ll say it anyway.
But before I go into that, I will explain how I came to see this name as something important.
It was an Eid and I was watching a butcher get ready to slaughter the sheep. And the sheep were cornered off calmly while he gets his things ready. But all of a sudden a bunch of the sheep were able to break free and started running down the street. So the butcher franticly ran after them, and then took the biggest sheep by the horns and dragged it towards where he had them cornered off. And this sheep was trying to pull away from the butcher, but wasn’t able to. It simply was no match for him. This by itself is an image that isn’t so strange. But what came next was what struck me. The rest of the sheep that had escaped were still following the biggest sheep, only now it was being dragged against it wishes to its dooms. And though this sheep didn’t want to follow the butcher, the rest were content in doing that.

And that is where the moniker Fangpyre came to be.

It means “Don’t be a sheep. Don’t lay your fangs to the pyre”.
Because the moment you give in and you no longer stand up for the things you believe in, is the moment you really die.
So you summon up the courage to say what you feel is right. And you can feel this crushing fear inside your gut about what will happen when you start talking.

But you say it anyway.

“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.