The Blog — Human Rights

From Syrian Sit-Ins on YouTube, to the worldwide Occupy movement, and the continued events following the transformative Arab Spring, web censorship rises as a prominent issue and concern for current social movements around the world. To share information between organizers and supporters through communication technologies has become, in some countries, risky and intensely challenging. A notable option to accessing blocked information and communicating securely is circumvention technology. Through the plethora of technologies available, digital activists of various movements and issues can both share their information with the world and mobilize within their country for change.

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Aliaa El Mahdy, an Egyptian university student, has created a facebook page called “Resounding Cries,” which asks Egyptian men to post photos of themselves donning the hijab (Muslim veil). Mahdy feels that it is unjust that only women are required to wear the hijab, which reflects the unequal status of women in Islam.

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We want to create a comprehensive library of all video documenting protests and violence agaisnt civilians in Syria. Check out what we already have, and send us what we are missing.

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Anver M. Emon, Ellen Lust, and Audrey Macklin interview Ahmed Saleh in Cairo and Nadine Wahab in Washington, D.C. about their experience as admins of the Facebook page which served as an information hub during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. 

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"I have been locked up, again on a set of flimsy charges, five years after imprisonment for supporting the judiciary" says Alaa Abd El Fattah. The Guardian has published a letter Alaa snuck out of his prision cell to his pregnant wife and we've republished it here. 

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This weekend, Egyptian blogger, Twitter activist, and human rights advocate Alaa Abd El Fattah (@alaa) went in to a military court in Egypt for interrogation. He refused to answer the military’s questions and was thus detained for 15 days. Activists in MENA and all over the world are campaigning on and offline for his release. 

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About 2,000 Palestinian prisoners have joined a hunger strike in Israeli prisons at the same time Israel and Hamas have announced that they've reached a prisoner swap deal that would result in the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli prisoner in Palestine.

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WITNESS has created a toolkit for human rights defenders and social change activists interested in using video to strengthen their advocacy campaigns.

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Currently the 3rd Arab Bloggers Meeting is taking place in Tunis. While many influential and important Arab bloggers are in attendance, those coming from Palestine were denied entry visas by the Tunisian Interior Ministry. Bloggers at the conference and their supporters online have launched a campaign to draw attention to the injustice and find out why the visas were denied. 

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Over the past few months we've been covering the Saudi #women2drive movement and this week we've shared some horrible news about human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia. People are asking us- "How can we help?" We believe getting the word out and making people aware that these human rights abuses are real and serious, is the first step to achieving change. Here's what you can do:

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