Voices from Bahrain on the Anniversary of the Uprising

We had a great event "Voices from Bahrain: Anniversary of the Uprising" on the first anniversary of the Bahrain uprising that featured three Bahraini activists and Freedom House VP Bobby Herman moderating. It got interesting during comments because a government-sponsored delegation of Bahrain youth activists also showed up (thanks to Qorvis Communications, the K Street lobbying firm, who is one of at least 10 PR firms the Bahraini government has hired in a desperate attempt to burnish its image in DC, and which unfortunately has not followed the lead of those lobbying firms that dropped their contracts with Egypt in the wake of the SCAF's crackdown on NGOs).

The activists on the panel included:

• Maryam al-Khawaja of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (a highly respected group that has been invaluable in monitoring, documenting and publicizing what has been happening in Bahrain since the crackdown and the attempts by the government to prevent foreign observers and journalists from entering the country)
• Hussain Abdalla of the Bahrain Youth Society, an American-Bahraini who lives in Alabama but has spent too many weeks to count in DC trying to raise awareness of the situation in his home country and prevent the US from selling weapons to a regime so violently repressing its own citizens
• Jalil al-Radhi, a Bahraini citizen turned activist after his brother and brother-in-law were tortured and killed by the regime in the March protests.

I live tweeted Voices from Bahrain for Freedom House (@freedomhousedc) and on my Twitter feed (@courtneyr). Here is the storify board someone created for the event.

Press Freedom in the Middle East a Year into the 'Arab Spring'

More than a year ago, uprisings in several Mideast countries triggered what has come to be called the Arab Spring. But when it comes to freedom of the press and on the Internet, it has been a chilling period in many parts of that region. Reporters and citizens have been spied on, beaten, imprisoned and even killed merely for telling the truth about what is happening in their countries.

Date and time:  Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - 9:30am

Location: National Press Club 529 14th St NW, 13th floor 
  Washington, DC 20045

Frank Smyth, @SmythFrank, executive director of Global Journalist Security and senior advisor for journalist security at the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Panelists include:

- Nada Alwadi, @Bentalwadi, a Bahraini journalist;
- Abderrahim Foukara, Al Jazeera’s Washington bureau chief;
- Jeffrey Ghannam, @JeffGhannam, a lawyer, writer and former reporter who has contributed widely to the debate on social media and media development in the Arab region.
- Clare Morgana Gillis, a US-based freelancer with Mideast experience who was jailed in Libya last year.
and me, representing Freedom House.

CQ's John Donnelly @johnmdonnelly the head of the NPC's Press Freedom Committee is the driving force behind the Club's advocacy and involvement in press freedom issues. Nearly a year ago Clothilde Le Coz, then heading Reporter's Without Borders' DC office, and I came up with the idea of doing a panel to examine how journalists were faring in the Arab Spring. But the challenge of lining up journalists with experience in the region and availability proved challenging! Nonetheless, a year to the date of the outbreak of the Bahrain uprising, we finally managed to organize it! Follow the discussion on Twitter using hashtag #pressfreedom.

The other press freedom organizations that contributed to this National Press Club event were: Freedom House, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the National Endowment for Democracy’s Center for International Media Assistance.

Arab Women Twitterati Meet for Real in Cairo

I returned from my truncated visit to the Middle East following a really great conference in Egypt and an advocacy training I did in Erbil, Iraq for civil society activists who are trying to institutionalize their own annual monitoring and reporting on the political and civil rights situation in the region. As I previously noted, my trip to Bahrain was cancelled at the last moment, so the highlight of my trip was indeed the Yahoo! Change Your World Cairo conference that brought together 100+ of the region's leading cyberactivists and women's rights activists for a day of story telling.

I've written two pieces about it so far, a piece for Women's eNews Arabic Twitter Stars Come Face-to-Face in Cairo Revolution, and another for Huffington Post Women And Social Media in The Middle East that provides a bit more color and context. I'm also working on a report for Yahoo! about the conference.

It was really cool to meet so many of the people I follow on Twitter and write about in my research on cyberactivism in the Middle East in person. I sat next to Manal al-Sharif, the intrepid 32-year-old behind the Saudi women driving campaign, and Mona el-Tahawey, an inspiration to all the women there who reminded me of my good ol' hometown of LA with her celebrity status. I was invited to moderate a panel on women, human rights and technology that was the biggest one of the conference, with six amazing women from across the region.

A picture I took of revolution graffiti in Zamalek

• Rebecca Chiao, co-founder of HarassMap , an online crowdsourcing mapping project created by and for women to track incidents of sexual harassment in Egypt. On Twitter @Harassmap
• Ghada Ibrahim, a Lebanese attorney working on various women rights issues and founder of an organization called Legal Affairs, which focuses on human rights issues from a legal perspective particularly those affecting women. She’s also a former parliamentary elections candidate in Lebanon (in 2000). She's also involved with the draft law criminalizing violence against women in Lebanon.
• Fida Ouri, webmaster and social media expert at Palestine's Radio NISAA FM the “First women’s radio station in the Middle East,” established in 2009. She is the only female that works as a webmaster in Palestine, doing everything from designing the layout to doing the code, and managing social tools
• Raja Althaibani, Middle East and North Africa Program Associate for Witness, a very cool organization that uses the power of video to bring attention to human rights abuses around the world.Follow on Twitter @RajaAlthaibani
• Dalia Abdelhameed, the Gender Program Officer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo.

Unfortunately Fadi Salem, Fellow and Director of the Governance and Innovation Program in the Dubai School of Government and recent author of the 3rd Arab Social Media Report, which focuses particularly on the gender divide, was unable to make it at the last moment. I made sure to ask about one of the findings of the report, however, namely what the implications of the social media gender divide in the Arab world may mean for human and women's rights movements. 

Freedom House denied entry to Bahrain despite visas

I was supposed to go to Bahrain tomorrow, with visa approved and flight booked, only to be told that we are not welcome and our trip should be postponed. I was to go with two colleagues from Freedom House for a training that is part of a women's empowerment program that ends in February. Yet the effusively 'polite' letter paid no heed and rather claimed that the Bahrain government is "working on the implementation of the recommendations" of the report by the independent commission (BICI) even though one of those was to let in human rights organizations!

In fact, when the report was released last November, King Hamad said "any Government which has a sincere desire for reform and progress understands the benefit of objective and constructive criticism" - apparently the Bahraini government is not one of them! A copy of the letter is below and a bigger one here. *update: here is the Freedom House press release about it.

 

In fact, violence has escalated over the weekend, with reports of clashes between mourners and security forces.  My thoughts are with all of those peacefully struggling for their rights in Bahrain, please stay safe and know that the world IS watching.

** Update: Please see the story posted by the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, the leading Bahraini group ensuring that monitoring and reporting on human rights abuses in the country occurs and reaches the international community. 

Whirlwind Middle East trip, talking, training, tweeting

I'm getting ready to leave for a two-week jaunt through the Middle East and looking forward to reconnecting with old friends, getting updated on the latest trends in cyberactivism, and meeting some of the amazing women who are using new technology for political and social activism.

My first stop is Cairo, where I'm taking part in the Yahoo! Change Your World summit as moderator of a panel exploring women’s rights, human rights and technology. We'll be looking at the increasingly critical role technology, and the internet in particular, play in amplifying the voices of those advocating for human rights and the advancement of women in society. The panelists include:

• Rebecca Chiao, USA/Egypt, co-founder of HarassMap , an online crowdsourcing mapping project created by and for women to track incidents of sexual harassment in Egypt
• Fadi Salem, UAE, Fellow and Director of the Governance and Innovation Program in the Dubai School of Government and recent author of the 3rd Arab Social Media Report, which focuses particularly on the gender divide
• Raja Althaibani, Yemen/USA, Witness, Middle East and North Africa Program Associate
• Dalia Abdelhameed, Egypt, Gender Program Officer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

We will be discussing the key issues related to women’s rights, human rights and social justice that women are addressing, and how are they using technology, social/digital media platforms to create solutions and increase awareness of those issues. We will also examine innovative technological and media applications for addressing human rights and social justice issues have emerged. Friend Mona Eltahawy is moderating the summit, so you know it will be good! There are too many amazing women (ok, and men) who are part of the summit to list now but will try to post more details later. In the meantime follow #changeyourworldcairo and check out the agenda

After that I'm headed to Iraq, or more specifically Kurdistan, to do a training for civil society and journalists. I'm really looking forward to this as I have not been in Iraq before, and with the devolving security situation there may be a limited window of opportunity to so safely. Iraq has consistently been ranked among the most dangerous places in the world for journalists and continues to face serious threats to press freedom, and I'm interested to learn more about the situation on the ground.

I will be tweeting as much as possible from the conference (#changeyourworldcairo) and the rest of my travels, follow me on Twitter at @courtneyr

Egyptian Blogger Sentenced by Military Rulers Amid Accusations of Human Rights "Cronyism"

My latest blog on Huffington Post

Blogger Maikel Nabil was sentenced to two years in prison yesterday, a one-year reduction from his three-year sentence handed down on Apr. 11 by a military tribunal in closed session. Nabil was tried by a military tribunal, despite being a civilian, joining the 12,000 people who have been convicted in such trials since the fall of Mubarak. He was convicted of insulting the army and publishing false news, which is of course ridiculous given the military are currently the political rulers of the transitional country and thus must be susceptible to criticism! Nabil founded the Facebook group No for Compulsory Military Service and has been arrested several times, yet continued to publish by sending hand-written notes from prison to his lawyers to post on his blog. He has also been on a hunger strike for more than 114 days, and his brother, said Nabil, will fast until "dead or released." Of course, Egyptian cyberactivists and citizen journalists are in an uproar, refusing to give up their right to free speech, which they so valiantly fought for, despite the SCAF's threats to take away these rights. Human rights organizations defending Nabil and advocating for his release alleged that his lawyers were tricked, and others cautioned about the dangerous precedent being set. The U.S. also called for his release yesterday, although for some reason the U.S. continues to provide unconditional aid to the military SCAF leaders even though they are consistently violating the fundamental rights of their citizens -- and this in a year of budget cuts and economic hardships in America!

Mikhail Nabil Sanad, picture courtesy of MidEast Youth Nabil's mainstream Egyptian media initially ignored his plight, but as this post written by blogger and friend Tarek Amr details, cyberactivists and citizen journalists pressed for the media coverage it deserved. As Rasha Abdullah, an AUC professor and author of a book on the Internet in the Arab world, tweeted: @rashaabdulla: "#MaikelNabil's case is clear message to #Internetactivists. We have to defend #freedom of expression. This is not acceptable. #Egypt #Jan25". 
Yet Egypt's cyberactivst community has also come under criticism for failing to galvanize opposition around his case as they have around the arrest and imprisonment of one of the grandfathers of Egyptian cyberactivism, Alaa Abdel Fattah, leading to accusations of "human rights cronyism." According to journalist Joseph Mayton, fewer than 20 people turned out for Nabil's court sessions yet organizers of the #NoMilTrials campaign for Alaa organized a massive march in late October throughout downtown Cairo to put pressure on the military to release him. (Alaa has refused to speak at his trial before a military court that he and many others see as illegitimate and thus unable to compel him to take part, but continues to blog from prison.) Mayton says "[t]he reason could boil down to simple cronyism, but I suspect it is even more intricate than this. Nabil has controversial, and unpopular, ideas on normalization with Israel. As a Coptic Christian, this has been scorned by activists in the country, who have an ardent anti-Israeli sentiment -- and justifiably so."
Alaa Abdel Fattah, courtesy of himself I disagree with Mayton's argument, however, that human rights groups should not concentrate on highlighting specific cases rather than broader human rights abuses -- this is a technique for making people care about those who are usually very far removed from them and their daily lives. The same technique is used by journalists, who find that person or anecdote that illustrates a broader trend or issue. He also blames this "cronyism" in part on access, which may be somewhat true but doesn't explain the true dynamics, which are far more complex in that they are related to the nature of networks and cyberactivism as it developed in Egypt. The power laws of networks mean that highly connected activists like Alaa, who was one of Egypt's first bloggers, is one of the most highly connected nodes in the Egyptian cybersphere and highly connected to international journalists, rights groups and transnational activist networks. He has more than 71,000 followers on Twitter and has posted more than 112,000 tweets, one of the most connected people in Egypt's cybersphere.
Mayton continues:

"Fattah is friends with the human rights institutions and journalists who report what goes on in Egypt. So, of course he has the upper hand in what is reported and what is advocated. Also, the rights workers understand that he is an international symbol that will galvanise foreign press to intervene and write an article on the situation. It's all PR."

If not for the last snarky comment I would agree; but why does that deserve condemnation? NGOs, journalists and activists have limited resources in terms of time and money, and the public has a limited attention span and are drowning in information. I have similarly written before about the unequal coverage given to highly connected cyberactivists in the post, "Meditations on journalism, cyberactivism and my research", and my PhD dissertation. Alaa spent years building up a transitional cyberactivist network that includes many of Egypt's most prominent activists, but they have not been silent on Nabil and neither have international groups. Which means that as we advocate for the U.S. to put its money where its mouth is with respect to the SCAF, and for the military to respect freedom of expression and opinion, it will benefit each and every person not just those who become poster kids.

Your Webcam is now a Weapon of Mass Communication

What a great tag line! Talk Back TV Mideast is a video remix/mashup platform that takes aim at state-run media and "video propaganda" in the Middle East by helping users provide commentary (or rants) attached to those media clips. The philosophy of the project is that in the wake of the era of state-media, "robust media commentary tools will be critical to advance democracy and transparency in the region."

A lot of the commentary is political, highlighting cases of military violence, the torture and deaths of activists, voting rights, etc. If you want to learn more but don't understand Arabic, Global Voices has a nice little roundup of one of Khaled Eibid rants on Essam Atta, the 24-year-old Egyptian activist who was tortured and murdered by guards while in detention in a military prison.

According to the description on the site: 

TalkBackTVMideast is all about democracy, free speech and transparency. Our goal is to put next generation media commentary tools into the hands of bloggers, journalists, activists, and experts. TalkBackTV is the next step in web-video, content creation and community building. TalkBackTV will turn TV into a two-way conversation - a virtual web driven conversation.

Will Talk Back TV enable the Middle East's Jon Stewart to emerge, strengthen those who would criticize and satirize their political and social (not to mention religious) leaders, promote freedom of expression and free thought? One can hope so!

I like the site's approach to copyright as well, its emphasis on fair use and plea to content owners to facilitate such commentarial use.

Fair Use is the flip side of the copyright coin. The TalkBackTVMideast Platform enables the public to confront, and critique those who control the political, cultural and media power levers.

That’s not just Fair Use..…it’s Fair. I look forward to seeing what becomes of this project.