April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

licenses for internet services are provided by the government, allowing
them to access data and know the locations of users, as well as being able
to cut connectivity without prior warning.
This makes life very difficult for people such as Wael Ghonim, Google's
head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa. Ghonim was
released on Monday having spent a week in custody after attending a
protest organised by the April 6 movement on 25 January. He rejoined
protests in Tahrir Square and went straight back on Twitter.
As in Tunisia, where leaked cables provided by WikiLeaks disclosed that
the US did not consider Ben Ali an ‘ally’ and preferred his removal from
power, Washington has long been collaborating with key leaders from the
April 6 movement. The WikiLeaks cables confirmed a change of
government in Egypt was predicted in 2011, allowing for negotiations with
other parties.
Generally portrayed by the American media as the lesser of two possible
evils, President Hosni Mubarak's rule has long been justified by the US as a
bastion against militant Islam. But in recent years, bloggers pushing for
democratic change have peeled back the myth of the regime. One of
Egypt's best-known English-language bloggers, Sandmonkey, was arrested
on 2 February while delivering medical supplies to Tahrir Square. He claims
he was then roughed up in prison and his blog suspended until his release
the next day.
ACTIVISTS CAN ACHIEVE GLOBAL PROFILES
In one of his previous blog posts, he described his extreme fatigue, having
been on the run for days. He wrote how ‘the situation here is bleak to say
the least. It didn’t start out that way. On Tuesday January 25 it all started
peacefully, and against all odds, we succeeded to gather hundreds of
thousands and get them into Tahrir Square, despite being attacked by antiriot
police who are using sticks, tear gas and rubber bullets against us.’
Sandmonkey went on to write: ‘I was shot at twice that day, [once] with a
semi-automatic by a dude in a car that we, the people, took joy in
pummeling. The government announced that all prisons were breached,
and that the prisoners somehow managed to get weapons and do nothing
but randomly attack people. One day we had organized thugs in uniforms
firing at us, and the next day they disappeared and were replaced by
organized thugs without uniforms firing at us. Somehow the people never
made the connection.’
Ahmed Maher, a leader of the April 6 movement whose protest plans have
been regularly intercepted by security agents, was also presumed to have
been arrested or detained. In an interview with Maher on 2 February,
Wired magazine learned he had not been arrested, but would not say
whether or not he had been roughed up by the police.
Rewind two years. On 6 February 2009, Philip Rizk, an Egyptian-German
filmmaker, was abducted from a police station by secret service agents in
the city of Qalyubia, north of Cairo. Rizk had been arrested while
campaigning for humanitarian support to Gaza. He claims he was taken to
a secret location three floors beneath the surface in unidentified facilities
and constantly interrogated about ‘my activism, my writing, everything.’
He was released after being held for four days.
In all likelihood, Rizk may not have been freed so soon, if at all, had his
friends and colleagues not mounted an international campaign that caught
the attention of the New York Times. Such abductions are par for the