From CBS News
Alaa Fattah has a voice that carries further than those of other
antigovernment activists. Fattah, just 23, is one of Egypt's leading
bloggers, part of an online community that acts as a virtual megaphone
for Egypt's burgeoning opposition movement. Other countries in the
Middle East have started cracking down on the Internet, arresting
bloggers and imposing strict censorship regimes.
As bloggers gain clout in Cairo, observers say it is only a matter of
time before Egypt follows suit. At a recent demonstration in Cairo's
Opera Square against the 25-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak,
activists distributed placards that read "Freedom Now" and "No to
Oppression." Fattah, on the other hand, passed out lists of Web sites to
a dozen or so local bloggers who act as an unofficial media outlet for
Egypt's disparate opposition. You just can't rely on the mainstream
media here.
Many Arab bloggers are tackling sensitive political and human rights
issues rarely broached by the state-controlled media. They are proving
to be a powerful source of information, capable of reaching a few
hundred like-minded activists, or of rallying international attention to
a cherished cause.
After government supporters attacked and beat protesters in late May,
Egypt's blogging community led the effort to publicize what had
happened.
I had never heard the word blogger until May 25, says Rabab al-Mahdi,
a political science professor at the American University in Cairo, and
an opposition activist. But now I know them well because of all the
amazing coverage they had of the protests. My friends overseas all
followed what happened through the blogs, because they have more
credibility than the mainstream media.
Activists in Egypt rely on blogs like Fattah's to find out the time and
place of future demonstrations, to learn who has been arrested and where
they have been taken, and to debate the effectiveness of opposition
strategies. In short order, Egypt's bloggers have become a political
force, capable of more than merely commenting from the sidelines.
In early June, Fattah and two other bloggers decided they were tired of
protesting in the same tired locations, with the same hackneyed slogans.
Acting independently of opposition elders, they used their blogs to
organize a protest in a working-class Cairo neighborhood, which
attracted a respectable 300 people. The young bloggers' innovative
logos, slogans, and choice of location prompted a sweeping debate among
the Egyptian opposition.
Similarly, after three suicide bombers pounded the Sinai resort town of
Sharm el-Sheikh on July 23, three other Egyptian bloggers organized an
antiterrorism candle light vigil. It attracted so much interest that the
government banned it at the last minute.
The new threat is only beginning to dawn on Middle Eastern regimes, long
accustomed to tightly regulating the flow of information. Bloggers and
online journalists have been imprisoned in Iran, Syria, Bahrain, and
Tunisia. Several others closely monitor and restrict access to Web
content. Media observers expect the region's bloggers to face growing
intolerance from governments.
In 2001, Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian emigrant to Canada, published
directions on how to make a blog in the Farsi language. Seven months
later there were 1,200 blogs in Iran. Today, there are an estimated
75,000 to 100,000 Iranians blogging, including former vice president
Mohammad Ali Abtahi. During the 2003 student uprisings in Iran, Internet
blogs and chat rooms allowed students to mobilize, organize, and
communicate with one another, free of prying government eyes.
Iran has since adopted one of the world's most substantial Internet
censorship regimes, according to the Open Net Initiative, a
partnership of researchers from Harvard, Cambridge University, and the
University of Toronto.
