Daunting News: Egyptian Blogger Sentenced to 3 Years Jail

Daunting news from Egypt in post-mubarakism surprised the world by jailing a blogger for three years. It shocked people because even in the Mubarak era, jailing bloggers was not as common as these last two months after Mubarak was forced to leave the power.

The only and the first case during Mubarak was Kareem Amir who was sentenced to 4 years in jail because of allegedly insulting Islam and Husni Mubarak. According to BBC, Maikel Nabil was arrested last month for blog posts where he criticized the role of the Egyptian Army during anti-government uprising. Based AFP, a military court sentenced him to three years in prison.

The Maikel Nabil case harks back to Mubarak era; it seems the Army is still remaining in its authoritarian nature and it would likely be hard to expect changes in institutions like the military. It clearly tells us that Egyptian Army does not tolerate criticism and it raises lots of unanswered questions about whether people’s efforts would finally succeed to a democratic society or not, was it worth it to sacrifice and how much power people have to change the governmental institutions. Anyway, the Maikel Nabil case is shocking and it makes the world look at post-mubarakism with doubt. Those who understand the nature of the Egyptian authoritarian regime which was headed by Husni Mubarak over the past 30 years will understand the nature of the Egyptian military and its court sentence for an internet activist and blogger of three years imprisonment.

We should not forget that it was Egyptian bloggers who were at the forefront of uprising since the beginning of uprising. I shall later write a separate piece more specifically on the role of blogging in the Egyptian revolution. It was the famous blogger, Khaled Said who was dragged from a cybercafe out into the street and beaten by police which led to his death. His death on June 12, 2010, outraged Alexandria’s residents and ultimately inspired many to stand up against Egyptian authoritarian regime which was headed by Husni Mubarak. Once again, even today, when in the case of Maikel Nabil proved that blogs continue to play an important role among traditional media, which is controlled by the state, but ultimately the uprising was caused by the bloggers who had relative freedom but not without intimidation and serious threat to their lives.

Goodbye Haloscan

Since 2004, I am using Haloscan platform in my blog which is quite easy tool that enable the readers to leave comments under the posts. Recently i learned that Haloscan has been purchased by JS-Kit. It is time to appreciate Haloscan that gave us free service and supported free speech. It is time to appreciate those who invented this platform and made it public with no commercial purpose - at least for blogger like me. But alas that JS-Kit is determined to make money out of it. The JS-Kit has made it a paid system. I don't know how a blogger who is receiving not a penny how he/she can pay $12 per year?

For the last years, I kept blogging and my readers were giving me their feedback which was joyful for me to read their thoughts. For the last years, no one paid me for blogging, so this raised a question in my mind that if i never paid for blogging why i should pay? I think it is unfair that JS-Kit has decided to use Hasloscan platform for commercial purpose which was used for supporting free speech. It turned out to be a holey platform through sharing inspirational thoughts and words. But why JS-Kit is misusing its decentness and popularity?

Now, I am pleading for your (those who are technical) assistance to move my comments from Haloscan into Blogger. I just looked around the web to find a useful tool to import the comments but i was not successful. It is rather complicated and I am not good in technical matters.

Please let me know if any of you can help me to migrate Haloscan comments into blogger otherwise I am losing more than 1500 comments which are recorded since 2004.

Learning Online Journalism and Writing Blogs in Helmand Province

Note that this article was first published in the America.gov (direct link of this interview)and if you reproduce this article you must retain this notice.
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Introduction: A surprising number of Afghans blog on the Internet and even more want to learn how. Nasim Fekrat has been at the forefront of helping Afghans use modern technology to communicate with each other and the rest of the world – but it can be a dangerous business. America.gov’s Jane Morse talked with him earlier this year while he was in United States on a fellowship (see: Eager to Learn About the World, Tech Savy Afghans Turn to Blogs.) In a new guest post, Nasim talks about his latest efforts to teach blogging in Helmand province, the largest in Afghanistan and the world’s top opium-producing region. The province is the site of ongoing deadly fighting between the Taliban and American, British and other NATO troops.

This is the sixth day that I am in the war-torn province of Helmand. My friends in other provinces do not know what I am here for, and before I explain it to them, they ask me, “What the heck are you doing there?”

I am in Helmand province to conduct a training session on online journalism and blog writing. We had planned for owners of 20 media outlets to participate in this two-day training session, but we received more applications than we expected. We were unaware that we would get 28 people for the training session, including reporters, poets and writers.

You may think that we had everything we needed for the training class, but we did not have everything. We had just two computers that connected to the Internet and we had 28 journalists. Every one of them required the Internet during the training. It may be unbelievable for readers or funny to them, but we did it. Every one of the participants had a blog entry by the end of the training session and had posted two subjects on their blogs. Almost all of the blogs were written in Pashto (one of the official and most common languages in Afghanistan) and discussed subjects such as culture, literature, community, politics and agriculture in Helmand province.

When I asked the participants what made them participate in the training, our discussion taught me something new. One of them, who was familiar with Wikipedia, told me: “I want to inform people about Helmand province.”

He said that whenever he goes to the Internet site to search Lashkargah (the capital city of Helmand province) and Helmand province, he only finds results that center on drugs, war and violence.

Therefore, he is learning to utilize blogging in order to inform the world that Helmand is not a place of drugs and war but has agriculture, culture and literary works which have not been widely publicized.

One of the participants told me that he wants to discuss the security challenges in Helmand province using blogging, and he wants to hear opinions from other bloggers concerning the operation in Helmand province and find solutions for the conflict in this province.

The enthusiasm for the training was more than expected and the reason for that is clear: This is a war-torn province and nobody is willing to put himself in danger in order to conduct training for journalists. But for me, as a young Afghan from the generation of war victims and refugees, I love to serve my country and my fellow citizens. I want to teach them the things that I have learned. I like to spread the culture of blogs and online journalism in Afghanistan among the younger generations.

This was the third workshop on blogging and online journalism which was conducted with the support of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the blogging Institution of Afghanistan in Helmand province. This program has been scheduled in other provinces and the next workshop will be in Bamyan province.

Read more about Nasim’s efforts at his English language blog, Afghan Lord at http://www.afghanlord.org/

You can see his photo gallery The World Through My Eyes at http://www.fekrat.org/

Additional photo galleries by Nasim can be found on NATO’s website, as well as at PreventHate.org:
http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2008/02/PHOTO/EN/index.htm
http://preventhate.org/gallery.asp

The Fight of Nasim Fekrat in Afghanistan

This post is written Philippe R. in Courrier International, you can read this in original version in French language. My friend Jean-Baptiste Perrin translated into English.
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With his personal blog Afghan Lord, Nasim Fekrat, 25, is a real fighter. His country Afghanistan has been on the front page of Western and foreign media for so many years, at the heart of what is called "the fight against international terrorism." In Kabul, Nasim fights too. With his own weapons and for a cause much braver and more difficult: freedom of expression.

Nasim Fekrat is an Afghan journalist, internationally recognized for his blog Afghan Lord that exists in English and Farsi. In 2005 already, Reporters Without Borders has awarded him its first prize to reward his work, his courage, his commitment. Afghan Lord is currently competing for the best South Asia blog 2008 awarded by the Brass Crescent Awards, oriented towards the Muslim world's blogosphere. Most recently, Nasim Fekrat won the 2008 Information Safety Freedom (ISF), received in Siena in Italy.

Nasim Fekrat has more than deserved his "trophies" of defender of the freedom of expression. This very freedom, he conquered it thanks to the Internet. He is an Afghan proselyte for blogging: he created the Afghan Press online journal and founded the Association of Afghan bloggers. Both in two versions, English and Farsi.

In its latest post dated December 14, Nasim Fekrat explains better than anyone why he won the 2008 ISF prize, as a militant for an Afghanistan open to the outside world.

"Digital Afghanistan was in my plan to foster an interest in digital media among young people in the Universities, schools, institutes and journalists. Digital Afghanistan was very important for me because I believe this is the only way we can tell our story to the world. Presenting Afghanistan through digital world is a job for new generation, not for those were involved in war, for those who were involved in massacres, those who plant opium but this the new generation that can tell to the world the reality what they believe and streaming in their live daily. They are the sources of truth and honest, they are tired of war, they are not the generation of suicide anymore."

Nasim Fekrat was awarded the ISF prize jointly with Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, an Afghan boy whose death sentence was commuted to 20 years in prison. His crime? Having read an article on the Internet.

When bloggers talk to bloggers

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I wrote this here already

It seems that bloggers always looking for bloggers. It happened for me when I heard about Stefen Niggermeier, a famous media journalist and blogger. I was very interested to meet a successful German blogger. His blog is called BILDblog, it observes and takes the role of a watchdog in regard to the largest newspaper in Germany, the tabloid “BILD”, as it regularly points to errors in the paper. His blog received several prizes.

Having dinner and chatting with him and asking him about why he became a blogger was an interesting moment. Stefan believes the best way to practice free speech and to write is blog. “In your blog you don’t have to be worried about the text length, you don’t have to consider the editorial advice and those principals which are asked normally from the editor of the newspaper”, he said.

Mr. Niggermeier also shared his experience in blogging: “Blogging is easy, just start, if you have word, just put it together and work in a specific way, you will be a famous blogger”.
In this way he became a blogger, as he said, playing with buttons for bloggers, but finally he had a blog and today he is one of the most famous bloggers in Germany.