This an amazing story, one that stands in stark contrast to our own situation here in America. If we jailed all those who spoke out against Bush, we wouldn't have room in the jails for real criminals.
An Egyptian blogger was convicted of insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak and sentenced to four years in prison on Thursday in Egypt's first prosecution of a blogger.Read the rest here (via). Michelle Malkin has more information on this here, including this:
Abdel Kareem Nabil, a 22-year-old former student at Egypt's Al-Azhar University, an Islamic institution, had pleaded innocent to all charges, and human rights groups had called for his release.
[...]
Nabil, who used the blogger name Kareem Amer, had sharply criticized Al-Azhar on his Web log, calling it "the university of terrorism" and accusing it of suppressing free thought. He also often criticized Mubarak's regime on the blog.
In one post, he said Al-Azhar University "stuffs its students' brains and turns them into human beasts ... teaching them that there is not place for differences in this life."
He was a vocal critic of conservative Muslims and in other posts described Mubarak's regime as a "symbol of dictatorship."
The university threw him out last year and pressed prosecutors to put him on trial.
Egypt is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the "freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media." The exceptions allowed are narrowly drawn and require proof of "necessity" before restrictions can be imposed. The posting of opinions on a student's personal blog hardly qualifies as a threat to national security, to the reputation of the president or to public order.He has also spoken out for equal rights for women and for freedom of speech in Egypt.
It's amazing to me that it was the university that instigated this, it's so important to have free speech in a learning environment. You want the students to engage in critical thinking and have the freedom to discuss their views.
Maybe the solution to this problem is that the citizens of Egypt take to their computers and all start speaking out against the government. Maybe when their jails start overflowing they will give freedom to their people.
Tags:
