The Skeptic الشكاك

1033 Riots, Detentions, Harassment, and Hashish

Busy with work, but wanted to flag a few items from the past few days:

* Two thousand people rioted in Aswan after police mistakenly killed a bird-seller in the southern Egyptian city.

* Egyptian activists yesterday staged protests to call for the release of 16 people detained in the southern city of Samalout in mid-October. Police used tear gas and batons to disperse an angry crowd that gathered when police killed a pregnant woman on October 8 as they searched her house.

* The protesters also called for the release of two activists, Mohammed Adil and Mohammed Khairy, suspected of trying to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza. State Security officers raided Mohammed Adil’s home in the early hours of November 21. State Security officers have detained Mohammed Khairy twice since October, and prosecutors have twice ordered his release, yet the latest reports I’ve seen indicate he is still in custody. Both are sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, and both maintain blogs. Noha Atef is doing a great job covering this for Global Voices.

* An Iranian reader wrote in to chastise me for writing about Hossein Derakhshan’s possible detention while ignoring two less ambiguous detentions. I am much ashamed.

* Egyptian police announced last Wednesday that they had arrested 550 boys in Cairo on suspicion of sexually harassing schoolgirls. The police reportedly focused their raids on Internet cafes near schools.

This drives me nuts. If there is an appropriate security response to sexual harassment, it is ensuring that women and girls feel comfortable reporting incidents and ensuring that police follow up on the reports. Rounding up boys by the hundreds for using the Internet is not the answer. Educating them from an early age to treat women with respect is.

* By the hash-o-meter, Barack Obama may be the most popular foreign leader in Egypt since Saddam Hussein. Wael Abbas reports that dealers are selling Obama-brand hashish in the Mediterranean town of Marsa Matrouh. 3arabawy recalls that “in 2003, a quite popular brand of hash that appeared in Cairo was named ‘Saddam’ coz it was ‘stronger than chemical weapons.’ “

1014 Where’s Hoder?

Where’s Hoder? If the Iranian government has detained him, they should say so. If he is free, he should say so.

A few days ago, Jahan News reported that Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, better known on the Internet as Hoder, had been arrested soon after his return to Iran, and that he had confessed to spying for Israel. On November 17, the official Islamic Republic News Agency ran the first part in a series of “confessions” from a “Hossein D, one of the people misled by the reformist movement.” (Global Voices has helpfully translated the full IRNA item. It should sound familiar to anyone who has seen previous propaganda “confessions“).

To date, there has been no independent confirmation of Hossein’s arrest, and I understand that his family and friends have not appealed for help. Jahan news, the only source for the story, has been described as “close to Iranian intelligence” and “not a reliable source of information.”

Rancor and Rumor
What we have, then, is a single, alarming rumor from a Web site of dubious reliability. But reaction to the rumor has brought into focus the Iranian-Israeli confrontation and the fault lines within the paranoid, sometimes poisonous world of Iranian diaspora politics. Rumor and paranoia are natural companions, and the original rumor has already multiplied many times over, into more rumors, insinuations, and hints of schadenfreude.

Look at the comments readers left on Brian Whitaker’s report. There’s the usual huffing and puffing that accompanies talk of Iran, Israel, and especially the two together. There’s a distracting thread about Mordechai Vanunu. There are suggestions that this whole thing is just an attention-grabbing stunt. And I’ve heard worse insinuated. How to account for the rancor and the rumor?

Hossein moved to Canada in 2000 and began blogging in 2001. He figured out how to use unicode on blogger to write in Farsi and published a how-to guide for the benefit of others. The Iranian blogosphere quickly ballooned, and Hossein became a well-known proponent of the Internet as an engine for free speech. Journalists called him the “Blogfather.” This sparked resentment from some Iranian bloggers, who felt he took too much credit.

In 2006, Hossein went to Israel on his Canadian passport on an invitation from Lisa Goldman. He explained:

I’ve publicly come to Israel to break a big taboo and to be a bridge between Iranian and Israeli people who are manipulated by their own governments’ and media’s dehumanizing attitude, especially now that the possibility of some sort of violent clash is higher than ever.

Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post loved it, and The New York Times published an op-ed of his with a Tel Aviv byline. Iranian bloggers, Hossein admitted to the Post, were less enthused. Nationalists reacted as anyone would expect. Critics of the government feared guilt by association.

Considering that he had been briefly detained on his last trip to Iran and forced to sign an apology for his writings, and considering that visiting Israel is a crime in Iran, Hossein knew that he would likely face some repercussions if he attempted to return to Iran. But he was already talking about going back one day.

Hossein had always argued online a lot: on blogs, on listservs, in articles. He made accusations and alienated a lot of people. In some cases, his attacks could have put activists in danger.

Over the course of 2006, as U.S. policy on Iran became more bellicose, Hossein became more defensive of the Iranian government. In September 2006 he argued that Iranian-Canadian academic Ramin Jahanbegloo’s “recantation” after four months in an Iranian prison had been sincere, that Jahanbegloo regretted that his work had “indirectly help[ed] the Bush administration in its plans for regime change in Iran through fomenting internal unrest and instability,” and that Iran’s government had “moved beyond state terror.” Some received the article with “bewilderement and outrage,” others as “a slap across the face.”

Around this time, Don Butler wrote in The Ottawa Citizen, “Interview requests from western-based Iranian media… dried up, as [did] invitations to ex-pat events and panel discussions.”

Undeterred, Hossein argued that “The Islamic Republic is worth defending. Even at its worst, it is way better than anything the US or anyone else can bring to Iran,” and added that he “would definitely support Iran if it one day decided it would start making [nuclear] weapons.”

It was also around this time that Hossein officially pulled the plug on stop.censoring.us, where he had formerly monitored Internet censorship in Iran. “Internet censorship exists in Iran,” he wrote, “As it does in many other parts of the world, especially in the Middle East.

But it has recently become another pretext for the United States and its allies to further demonise and delegitimise the government of Iran.

Despite all problems and challenges, I believe that Islamic Republic is a legitimate, sovereign and democratic system and I reject any attempts to participate in such nasty demonising campaigns, which ultimately try to justify the Western intervention.

I believe that Internet censorship is an internal problem and the only way to solve it should also come and develop from within. Taking such efforts beyond Iran and into the international scene will benefit the American politicians more than the Iranian internet users.

Therefore, although this website has not been updated for almost a year, I now officially shut it down.

In October 2007, Mohammed Mehdi Khalaji, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, sued him for $2 million, alleging that he had defamed him in a series of blog posts beginning in 2005. In response to the lawsuit, Hossein’s hosting company asked him to remove the posts. He refused, and, after an exchange of emails, the hosting company eventually canceled his account. Ethan Zuckerman, who has long experience with Hossein, defended him on principle, but had to admit “that Derakhshan can be abrasive and difficult.”

Where’s Hoder?
None of this answers the question, “Where is Hoder?” But it does help explain some of the rancor.

So where, indeed, is Hoder? It’s been days now since this rumor started. If he were near a phone line, you would think that he would have noticed the noise and written to say he’s alright. This is a man who monitors Technorati links to his op-eds. Hossein’s family and friends have not come forward to ask for help, but before he returned to Iran this last time, Hossein asked people not to campaign on his behalf if he were detained in Iran because he expected he would not be held long, and that nothing serious would happen to him. I sincerely hope he is hiking in the mountains of Iran, blissfully unaware of the brouhaha.

To those who believe Hossein should be given the same consideration he showed previous detainees, consider these words from H.L. Mencken: “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

If the Iranian government does have him (and pardon me for saying so, Hossein), it should say so and release him. Given Hossein’s high profile and his expressed views, he’d make a funny kind of an Israeli spy.

Disclosure: I first met Hossein Derakhshan at a 2004 conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he spoke about blogs and censorship in Iran. We have crossed paths at least once a year since, each time in a different city. I last saw him in June, in Budapest, where we had a cordial argument about whether international human rights organizations were pawns for Dick Cheney and the Israel Lobby (I argued against).

799 Syria ‘Tightens Control Over Internet’

Mazen Darwich‘s Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression reports that 161 (mostly opposition) sites are blocked in Syria and that the government has become more savvy about plugging up loopholes. Phil Sands in The National:

In a sign that the censors are becoming more technologically advanced, a series of software gaps that existed in online controls a few months ago have been closed. It used to be a relatively simple matter for internet surfers to get around the censors using freely available programmes. Now accessing prohibited pages is much more difficult, and requires specialised knowledge.

I’d love more details, please!

732 UN Agency Eyes Curbs on Internet Anonymity

While all eyes were elsewhere:

A United Nations agency is quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government, to define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous.

The U.S. National Security Agency is also participating in the “IP Traceback” drafting group, named Q6/17, which is meeting next week in Geneva to work on the traceback proposal. Members of Q6/17 have declined to release key documents, and meetings are closed to the public.

The potential for eroding Internet users’ right to remain anonymous, which is protected by law in the United States and recognized in international law by groups such as the Council of Europe, has alarmed some technologists and privacy advocates. Also affected may be services such as the Tor anonymizing network.

“What’s distressing is that it doesn’t appear that there’s been any real consideration of how this type of capability could be misused,” said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. “That’s really a human rights concern.” [Please read the full article from CNet]

Meanwhile, back in Egypt:

• Residents of Dowaiqa, the slum flattened by falling rocks last week, have again clashed with police in the neighborhood. When you hear that the government deployed heavy security, but left rescue efforts largely to the residents themselves while rescue workers napped in the shade, you can understand why. Two stories in English stand out: This one, from AP’s Lee Keath and Maggie Michael, and this one, from The National‘s Nadia Abu al-Magd.
• Hossam Badrawy, chairman of the ruling NDP’s Education Committee, and an MP widely touted as one of the party’s leading reformers: “No new policies at NDP conference.”
• Allegations that “all the people were tortured” ahead of a State Security trial for the Mahalla detainees. For first-hand accounts from the trial, see journalist Sarah Carr’s blog.
• The Economist, taking a broad view of fin-du-regime Egypt, asks “Will the dam break?”

705 Egyptian Blogger Detained Under Emergency Law

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and the Hisham Mubarak Legal Center report that Mohammed Refaat, a student and a blogger, was detained on July 21 on charges of “threatening public security” by using the Internet to call for a strike on July 23. Refaat apparently approached a State Security officer who goes by the assumed name Hisham Tawfiq at State Security headquarters after he found his house had been searched and his computer and books had been seized. He was then detained and charged in case No. 1143 for 2008.

On August 17, the organizations report, a State Security prosecutor ordered him released, but officers brought him back to State Security headquarters.

I took a quick look at Refaat’s blog and could find nothing political.

695 Parliament Destroyed, Paper Banned

Let me never again complain that things happen in Egypt only when I’m out of the country. I was at a meeting two blocks away from Parliament around the time the fire started in the Shura Council yesterday. I noticed nothing as I was leaving (the air is always full of smoke), and learned of the disaster only via SMS when I got home. I watched the fire on TV like millions of other squares.

Word has it that Al-Badil‘s late edition was banned last night for its reporting on the fire [UPDATE: I’m now hearing the paper wasn’t officially banned. The government-owned Al-Ahram printing house simply delayed publication of the edition until it was too late, effectively ensuring that it didn’t come out. FURTHER UPDATE: The edition came out the next day, toned down]. The daily has published the edition online (full paper in a compressed file here). For convenience’s sake, I’m posting their coverage as image files here:

While I was in India for a wedding, it seems two big stories broke in Egypt:

• The state introduced stiff new traffic laws in a Quixotic attempt to curb the chaos and gridlock that paralyzes Cairo. That Al-Ahram Weekly story doesn’t mention the fines for professional drivers who smoke behind the wheel. Nice for nonsmoker passengers, but probably foolish to produce hundreds of thousands of pissed-off, nicotine-deprived taxi drivers.
• The Cairo and Alexandria Stock Exchange took a dive when rumors suggested that a prominent Egyptian businessman had fled the country following the arrest of suspects in the brutal murder of Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim. Stocks rebounded when the businessman and his friends debunked those rumors. A government ban on reporting the story did little to keep the story quiet, but perhaps helped restore confidence in the stock market by suggesting the government would stand by the maligned millionaire. Feisty Al-Dustur ran the story; editor Ibrahim al-Mansur told AFP government agents pulled all copies of that edition as a result. General Prosecutor Abd al-Magid Mahmud reportedly lodged yet another case against Managing Editor Ibrahim Eissa in connection with the affair.

In unrelated news, Global Voices has an excellent update on online censorship in Tunisia, and Ellen Knickmeyer has an article for the Washington Post about those nauseating “Veil Your Lolipop” ads.

652 The BBC on Internet Censorship

I’ve just come back from a fascinating week at the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Budapest. Lots to think about (I’m still mulling over questions raised in a session about cross-cultural deafness and misunderstanding around the online campaign pegged to the 2008 Olympics, for example), but in the meantime, this great report from the BBC:

(Audio courtesy of the dashing Antony Lowenstein.)

607 ‘We wish to inform you that from April 14, 2008, we will be blocking sites’

SMS message sent on April 13 to customers of DU, the United Arab Emirates’ second ISP, serving Dubai Media City, Dubai Internet City, and Knowledge Village.

[tags]UAE, Dubai, censorship, internet[/tags]

560 Mass Protests in Gaza and Cairo

• Thousands of Gazans have formed a human chain along the Israeli border to protest the continued closure of the Strip.
• In other border-related news: Egyptian soldiers fatally shot an Eritrean woman trying to cross the border to Israel illegally today.
• Thousands of students at Cairo’s Ain Shams University protested against the military trial of 40 leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood yesterday. The tribunal is expected to deliver its verdict tomorrow.
• From RSF:
  

  Blogger Tariq Biasi, who has been detained since 7 July 2007, denied posting comments critical of Syria on a website when he was questioned by a Damascus state security court on 22 February. The authorities identified him as the author of the offending comments on the basis of the connection through which they were posted, but he told the court he shared it with six other subscribers including an Internet café.

  Aged 22, Biasi is to be tried on 17 March on charges of “undermining national sentiment” and “publishing false information” under articles 285 and 286 of the criminal code, which carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

  There’s a petition for his release here.

546 Error Gave FBI Access to Private Emails

Kudos to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has made public a document it received through a FOIA request showing that “an apparent miscommunication” gave the FBI access to all email on a domain, rather than the account it had permission to monitor.

I really like the EFF. They’re a smart, effective operation. Press release here. More about their work here. And despite its acknowledged weaknesses, I still recommend TOR, which they sponsor, to people trying to access censored Web sites or browse anonymously.

(Note: Egyptian readers using Link.net may find the TOR project page doesn’t load. I’ve never been able to test whether Link blocks the page, but I’ve often had problems trying to go there directly when browsing from Egypt. The page does work when I use TOR or a simple proxy.)

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