Maikel Nabil Sanad is today entering his 50th day of hunger strike. The Egyptian blogger has been abstaining from food since 23 August in protest of a three-year sentence handed to him by a military court on charges of “insulting the armed forces” and “spreading false news” in a blog post published last March.
Sanad had accused the Egyptian military of having conducted virginity tests on female protesters earlier that month — a charge that a senior military general later admitted was true. He had been handed the sentence after being tried in a martial court where, according to his younger brother Mark, “eyewitnesses were barred from testifying in the case.”
Maikel Nabil Sanad in Tahrir Square, Cairo on 30 January. Photo uploaded by Mena Nader on Yfrog
Journalist Shahira Amin visited him at the start of October, when he weighed 48 kilograms after having shed 12 kilograms since the start of his strike. “I’d rather die than live as a slave without dignity under an oppressive regime,” he explained to her.
Amin added that Sanad’s family fears he may not survive until his appeal hearing scheduled for today. The hearing had originally been set to take place on 4 October — the 43rd day of his hunger strike — but was adjourned until 11 October after a judge said that documents were “missing from the courtroom.”
Last week, the UK’s Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, Alistair Burt, expressed concern about Sanad’s situation. In a statement Burt said,
We have raised concerns about Maikel Nabil Sanad’s treatment as well as the issue of trials of civilians in military courts and the continued State of Emergency with the Egyptian authorities. We continue to urge the Egyptian authorities to repeal the emergency law.
Freedom of expression, including freedom of the media, is fundamental to building a democratic society and we will continue to follow the human rights situation in Egypt closely.
Ontario Provincial Police have charged an activist with two counts of defamatory libel for online comments he made regarding undercover police officers. Using fake names, Dan Kellar outed two officers who had infiltrated activist networks. Upon learning that one of them was spotted in Toronto, he put out a “community alert’’ on the website of an activist group he was involved with. Police claim the comments were likely to injure the reputation of the officers by exposing them to hatred, contempt or ridicule. Kellar says the charges are an attempt to stifle dissent. He will appear in court in Toronto on 20 September.
The European Court of Human Rights will this month examine complaints against Azerbaijan filed by bloggers Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade. The pair claim that their detention from July 2009 to November 2010 and subsequent conviction violated articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The complaint filed by Milli and Hajizade says that Article 6, on the right to a fair trial, was violated because they were allowed only belated access to their lawyers and because they court took no account of what their lawyers said.
Article 8 on respect for private and family life was violated, according to the complaint, because the two bloggers were denied family visits while held and certain family members were not allowed to testify at the trial.
Article 10 protects the right to freedom of expression, including the “freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.”
The two prominent youth activists were arrested in July 2009 on charges of “hooliganism” and “inflicting minor bodily harm”, after a fight in a restaurant in downtown Baku. Reports and eyewitness accounts have said the pair were talking among a group of other civil society figures when they were severely beaten by two sportsmen, who it has been alleged were government-orchestrated provocateurs. After Milli and Hajizade filed a complaint with police, they were arrested, although their assailants were let go, raising suspicions that the duo’s attack and arrest were linked to their activism.
In November of the same year, having both been held in prison for over four months, the pair were sentenced. Hajizade received a two-year sentence and Milli two-and-a-half years. They were released a year later, although their convictions have not been overturned. The Presidency of the European Union, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and various rights groups all condemned the verdict.
Both bloggers had been prolific in using social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to mobilise Azerbaijani youth mobilise opposition against the government, speaking out against high-level corruption, misuse of oil revenues and censorship.
Prior to their arrest, the pair had earned their title “Donkey Bloggers” by posting a video satirising the country’s government for having spent a large amount of state money importing two donkeys from Germany. Rights groups had suspected the video was a key trigger in the bloggers’ arrest.
Last year Index on Censorship together with ARTICLE 19, Media Diversity Institute, and Open Society Foundations, produced a report on free expression in Azerbajan: Free Expression Under Attack
