The Blog — Twitter Activism

As expatriated Syrian activists use Facebook and other social networking sites to express their thoughts and keep in touch with Syrians on the ground, the Assad regime continues to harass them both in real life and online.

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2011 was a BIG year for human rights and democracy activists using online and mobile technology for their movements and campaigns. Across Africa, MENA, Asia, and all over the world passionate non-violent activists have been able use Facebook, Twitter, Bambuser, Protest4, YouTube, SoundCloud, and more as a 'megaphone' to the rest of the world as they advocated for their rights.  We are crowdsourcing the most inspiring articles, videos, and images from 2011 according to YOU! Using the hashtag #INSPIRATION share the memes that mean the most to you and we'll include them in our end of the year post. 

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Syrian blogger Razan Ghazzawi was arrested yesterday while trying to leave Syria via the Jordanian border. Razan was on her way to a conference in Amman about defending the freedom of the media in the Arab World when she was detained. Razan has a master’s degree in comparative literature from the University of Balamand in Lebanon, and she is the author of razanghazzawi.com where she defends freedom of expression. Additionally, she has been one of the few Arabic activists who advocates for the rights of homosexuals in the Arab World.

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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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The Chavez government has fined the Venezuelan television station Globovison (the country's last remaining critical network) $2million for coverage of deadly prison riots in June and July. Venezuleans have turned to Twitter to support the station and the freedom of expression.

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Follow these Twitter lists created by Movements.org and others to keep up with democracy and human rights activism all over the world. Is someone important missing from of the lists created by @aym? Want to help us create a list for your country? Email us and we'll make the additions.

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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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Despite the ousting of Mubarak, tyranny continues to plague the Egyptian people. On Sunday October 9th, approximately 26 Egyptian Coptic Christian protesters were killed by the Egyptian army. The demonstration took place in Maspero, which is located in downtown Cairo. Demonstrators called for equal rights in Egypt and condemned the recent attack on a church in Aswan.  Many protesters were struck down by military vehicles and others were shot by the Egyptian army. Reports vary on the number of those injured, ranging from 150 to 300.The Egyptian regime claims that the protesters provoked the army by firing shots first, citing unknown foreign hands as agents behind the incident.  However, most of the protesters and opposition movement members have confirmed that none of the protesters used weapons.Activists used YouTube in order to publish some of the information that

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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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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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