KnowTnT.com says of the U.S. pastor who intends to burn the Quran on September 11: “Let us get to the real heart of this matter, which is not about God's love but about MAN'S HATE. I hope that everyone out there will listen when I say God's love will NEVER stem from hate…”

What would have happened had petrochemical industry ceased to exist in Taiwan? The Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) under Taiwan's Ministry of Economical Affairs has tried hard to convince Taiwanese citizens that if Taiwan does not build more petrochemical industrial plants, its economy will collapse and people will suffer. On the other hand, environmentalists, activists, and bloggers are looking forward to seeing the end of such a polluting industry destroying the island's lands, water, and air.

On September 6 and September 7, 8 half-page advertisements were published in the four major newspapers in Taiwan, telling the readers that “Without petrochemical industry, we won’t have new toothbrushes, new bicycle tires, new umbrellas, and new ink to print newspapers.” The IDB is the mastermind of the advertisements, and also plans to publish thousands of handbooks for demonstrating the value and benefits petrochemical industry has brought to Taiwan. This series of propaganda aims at persuading Taiwanese to support the government's decision to build the new Kuokuang petrochemical plant on the biggest wetland of Changhua County[en].

So far, IDB has spent TWD 3 million (about USD 100,000) of  taxpayer’s money on the ads to defend private corporations' interests. Environmental groups[zht] and media and press watch organizations[zht] reacted to such an abuse of public expenses by making open statements, while bloggers and online activists adopted a different approach.

Wenli Xu, a well-known Nintendo collector and online activist, designed another set of ads to tell his readers his vision of Taiwan without petrochemical industry: [zht]:

[沒有石化業，老阿嬤就不用赤腳抗爭。]

[沒有石化業，哪來的六輕大火？]

[沒有石化業，白海豚就不必學會轉彎。]

[沒有石化業，沒傘撐也不怕淋到酸雨。]

[沒有石化業，鄉親們就不必圍廠抗爭。]

[沒有石化業，經濟部就不會花四五百萬稅金登匿名廣告。]

[沒有石化業，哪來的狗屁倒灶？]

Umi Wang on Facebook followed Wenli and designed four other ads to mock at IDB's propaganda. Below are two of them:

沒有石化業，哪有油水可以撈

沒有石化業，哪來的毒可以吸

A Facebook fan page has been set up to invite people to share their vision of Taiwan without petrochemical industry.

沒有石化業，雲林也可以跟宜蘭一樣辦童玩節。

Hedula Lee: 沒有石化業，石油要怎樣消耗殆盡？

Dailin Lin 林黛羚: 沒有石化業，抽煙才吸得到煙味。

The output value of petrochemical industry accounted for TWD 1.3 trillion (USD40.6 billion) in 2009, showing its undeniable economic contribution. However, independent environmental news reporter Shuchuan, quoted statistics from the Energy Bureau under the Ministry of Economical Affairs, which indicated that in 2009 petrochemical industry and other high energy consumption industries together used 36.3% of all energy in Taiwan, while generating less than 4% of the island's GDP[zht].

So why is the government still eager to expand such an inefficient industry? Munch provided us with a deliberated answer[zht]:

對於政府，國光石化的建造，重點不只是石化產業，而是二岸經濟臍帶的連結關係。

中國設立海峽西岸經濟區後，政府想在二岸經濟架構下，完成上游台灣，下游中國的跨海產業整合，透過政策管制不肯放行，依舊規劃在台灣設立石化上游產業，期待在ECFA通過後，石化列為早收名單，在二岸跨海合作生產下，原料台灣生產，免關稅進入中國加工，再銷往中國市場，甚至銷往東協。

However, Munch believes that Taiwan government’s plan is a mere fantasy:

台灣石化生產內需已足，再增加的產量幾乎都是外銷為主，但在中國強力要求海峽西岸經濟區內的垂直產業建立，加上2015年量產早已錯失商機，台灣石化業者巴不得國光石化環評不過，台灣生產澈底破局，政府全面開放西進設廠。

Apart from fighting against the ever expanding petrochemical projects in Taiwan, the Environmental Protection Union of Changhua[zht] works to prohibit the government from selling the large piece of wetland in Changhua to Kuokuang petrochemical plant. It has initiated the first environmental trust in Taiwan[en] by urging citizens to collectively buy in the piece of wetland and become shareholders[zht]. More than 30,000 citizens have pledged to join online.

Abeni is saddened by the death of Vincentian Kellisha Ollivierre, one of the victims of the robbery/fire in Barbados: “My hope is that their deaths will drive home the need for strict adherence to building codes. This laissez-faire attitude with respect to people's lives has to end.”

Brazil’s electoral law reform, approved in 2009, will have a positive impact on the October 2010 general election by giving citizens access to more information than ever before. Furthermore, many emerging transparency projects from civil society, the private sector and the public sector are working together, actively using new technology tools to make the election visible and to get citizens involved in the upcoming celebration of democracy.

Next October, about 135 million [pt] Brazilians will vote for president, governor, senator, federal and state or district deputies. Last year, the Electoral Reform [pt] opened the doors for politics 2.0 by authorizing parties to use social networks (Twitter, Facebook and others) to raise campaign donations and participate in streamlined debates.

Before the elections, multiple projects were already working on issues such as transparency, civic engagement and public policies monitors. Google created an election platform [pt], compiling information about presidential candidates and displaying an interactive map showing election results since 1994, as well as bringing together the most active civil society initiatives: Campanha Ficha Limpa (“No Criminal Record Campaign”), Excelências (“Excellences”), Movimento Voto Consciente (“Conscientious Vote Movement”), VotenaWeb (“Vote on the Web”), and Eleitor 2010 (“Elector 2010”).

Google’s platform encourages voters to ask questions to their candidates by submitting them via a YouTube channel. The best questions, as chosen by the platform users, will be answered by candidates on television.

Paula Góes, Global Voices’ Multi-Lingual Editor, wrote about Campanha Ficha Limpa: “The Ficha Limpa (No Criminal Record) bill…seeks to prevent politicians who have committed serious crimes, such as misuse of public funds, corruption, murder and drug trafficking, from running in elections.” The Movimento de Combate à Corrupção Eleitoral [Movement Against Electoral Corruption] created the campaign in 2008 and prepared a bill (in Brazil, the citizens can propose a bill if they obtain a certain number of signatures). Avaaz.org played an important role in collecting signatures and putting pressure on the legislature to approve the bill. The Ficha Limpa Law was enacted by president Luiz Inácio Lula in June 2010.

The Superior Electoral Court ruled that the Ficha Limpa Law is valid and enforceable for the 2010 elections. After that decision, the founders of the campaign launched a website to monitor candidates’ compliance with the law, with additional features like visualizing gathered data and news from the media. The site also includes a form to report candidate misbehavior.

If a candidate wants to be listed on the Ficha Limpa site, he or she must fulfill a pledge of transparency during the campaign by presenting a weekly report on his or her spending and other information. Forty candidates have already registered.

Voto Consciente is an association that was founded in 1987. The objective is to consolidate citizen participation by informing the public about politicians and their competencies. They also have a website to present that information and news about the association. They have many online activities, such as participation in social networks, publications and videos. For example, the movement in the city of Jundiai published a document about 16 candidates for state deputy and information about how citizens can use the Internet to supervise politicians or propose solutions for their city’s problems.

The other projects presented in Google’s platform have been documented as case studies on the Technology for Transparency Network. VotenaWeb was studied in the first phase of our research, while Excelências and Eleitor 2010 will be presented in the coming weeks.

Votenaweb allows citizens to compare their votes on congressional bills with the politicians'. Using a clear interface, congressional bills are translated into simple language with clearly defined context and consequences. In addition to monitoring the voting records on particular bills, users can also interact with the political landscape by symbolically voting for or against each bill. This tool helps citizens choose who to vote for by enabling them to find candidates’ voting records in recent years.

Excelências was created in 2006 by Transparência Brasil (“Transparency Brazil”). Excelências uses the Internet to make information about Brazilian parliamentarians available to the public. They use official data to increase transparency surrounding 2368 politicians. As with VotenaWeb, Excelências helps inform citizens about the candidates in the 2010 elections.

GV contributors Paula Goes and Diego Casaes are the coordinators of Eleitor 2010.

Eleitor 2010 (”Elector 2010″), which was recently covered on Global Voices by Janet Gunter, intends to monitor Brazil's elections in 2010. The project uses the Internet to receive complaints about irregular campaigns during the elections. It uses the crowdsourding platform Ushahidi to document and map content submitted by citizens via SMS, email, Twitter, and various social networks. The coordinators are Paula Goes and Diego Casaes, both of Global Voices.

Multiple projects in Brazil track candidate behavior and monitor politicians’ work after they are elected. Congresso Aberto (“Open Congress”) visualizes and analyzes official data from Brazil's Congress. In Cidade Democratica (“Democratic City”), citizens document and discuss municipal problems and solutions as well as discussing candidates’ proposals and visiting candidate profiles. Finally, Adote um Vereador (“Adopt a politician”) encourages Brazilian citizens to blog about the work of their local elected officials in order to hold them accountable. Though Adote um Vereador currently focuses on local politicians, Milton Jung, one of the founders, hopes to extend the project to national politicians elected in October.

Several other initiatives to increase citizen participation before the elections are also at work in Brazil:

• 10 Perguntas (“10 Questions”): Until September 3, citizens can send questions for the president candidates. After this date, the top 10 questions chosen by the users will be answered by the candidates.
• Eu lembro (“I remember”): This website searches for information about all candidates in social networks as Twitter, Wikipedia, Busk and YouTube. It also provides a platform where users can discuss the candidates.
• Quanto vale seu candidato? (“How much is your candidate worth?”): This site allows citizens to visualize information about the property holdings of various candidates.
• Voto Certo (“Right Vote”): This website contains information about 2010 elections such as candidates, campaign financing, and electoral campaign map and a timeline.

The upcoming elections are marked by the highest Internet usage ever in Brazil, both by candidates and by citizens. For example, all candidates for president have accounts on Twitter and other social networks. The first online election debate, promoted last week by an Internet provider, surpassed 1.7 million hits and led the trending topics on Twitter during that period. At the same time, these tools are not restricted to use by candidates and media. Several NGOs, citizens and companies are using the Internet to improve access to information about candidates or supervision of the campaign. Google’s platform presents part of these experiences.

Hopefully technology tools and connectivity will help Brazil to elect better politicians for the next four years and to create a database about these politicians that will help hold them accountable for their actions in government. Despite the relatively short time of using these tools, we can say that by Brazil’s next elections, the Internet will be established as a space to promote greater information on candidates and the actions of government.

The Haitian Blogger discusses the recent death of a young man, allegedly at the hand of UN troops, saying: “It is because of the continuous abuses by MINUSTAH and violent incidents like the one in Cap-Haitien on August 17 that Haitians are demanding an end to the UN occupation of Haiti.”

[This post was originally published on Ushahidi's blog. Ushahidi is an open-source mapping tool that was developed in Kenya at a time of crisis in 2008 and has since been used for crowdsourcing worldwide.]

School children being told to chant candidates’ names by their teachers. Civil servants getting sacked for not campaigning for their political bosses. Zinc roofing being traded for votes. The public wholesaling of voters’ personal data to campaigners. Death threats to those who denounce electoral crimes.

Welcome to the unpleasant side of Brazilian electioneering.

These are just some of the reports coming from Eleitor 2010, a “crowdsourcing” project aiming to facilitate citizen reports of abuses of the electoral process in Brazil.

In the largest democracy in Latin America - with over 120 million voters - this year, voters go to the polls they will be choosing the successor of one of the country's most popular Presidents in history (Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva) but also voting on governors, a large portion of Congress.

Eleitor2010 website

Every country has its own unique political culture and oddities. Even the most minimal democracy has its own rules around electioneering, the mechanics of the vote, and ensuring that the state regulates the electoral process.

Brazil was one of the first democracies of its size to use electronic voting machines. It also has compulsory voting. But other aspects of its electoral process are unique, including attempts to strictly regulate of online campaigning, vote buying and what are called “showmícios” (concert-rallies).

Brazil has very clear and comprehensive laws regulating elections but the problem is enforcing these laws.

There is a real culture of politicians subverting the law, maintaining a privileged position as patrons of voters in Brazil. This stems from a distant colonial past and continued persistent inequality, where entrenched elite interests have maintained themselves.

The idea behind Eleitor 2010, which is a purely volunteer, non-partisan project run by a virtual team with zero funding, is to engage the voter beyond the day of the election. According to Paula Góes and Diego Casaes, its creators - who met via Twitter and now collaborate on Global Voices Online, the project is to promote critical and active citizenship, that challenges some of the arcane and undemocratic practices mentioned above.

Eleitor 2010 runs on the open source software Ushahidi, a web-based platform which received much attention for its utility in mapping incidents after the Haiti earthquake, driven by SMS reports from the ground.

Ushahidi has yet to reach its full potential as an election monitoring platform, say Góes and Casaes. With an estimated 25% of the country online every day, and one of the highest mobile subscriber rates in Latin America, they hope Brazil could be the place where it comes of age this year. Four weeks away from the election, Eleitor 2010 already has 230+ reports, from every state in the country, and from the most remote areas.

However, it is an uphill battle to get the message out about the platform, in a country where broadcast and print media are still strong, held in the hands of a privileged elite bent on defending its interests.

Despite this, the communications team at Eleitor 2010 has generated some media attention, and networking with other online transparency initiatives has been crucial. Google recently featured Eleitor 2010 on its page dedicated to the Brazilian elections.

Góes and Casaes hope that with their awareness campaign - on social networks including Orkut with over 40 million users, partnerships with networks of internet cafés, NGOs, and social movements - Eleitor 2010 will break through and change the way thousands of voters engage in the electoral process.

Through the plaftorm, some entertaining anecdotes have already come to light, well in advance of the October 3 vote.

Voters caught one man in a small town in the interior selling off Twitter accounts with 40,000+ followers for the sickeningly low price of US$125. This is illegal under Brazilian electoral law. When confronted, the man in question gave more incriminating evidence and then threatened to sue Eleitor 2010. The evidence, including screenshots and transcript of a chat with him, were delivered to the Electoral Courts.

Another comic report from São Paulo, where teachers at a school illegally encouraged children to chant for two candidates, one for mayor and one for President, and it backfired with children instinctively chanting “Lula!” “Lula!” The video circulated widely, and has had over 70,000 views.

Another video that raised eyebrows was one by blogger Ricardo Gama of a VW bus owned by the City Hall being used for a campaign in Rio de Janeiro. The blogger shouts “Are you carrying electoral propaganda in the car of the City Hall? This is an electoral crime! I filmed it. I am going to denounce you.”

From the north of Brazil, in the state of Maranhão, word reached Eleitor 2010 that a network of evangelical churches was offering to “trade” 3,000 votes for “support” after the election. In the state of São Paulo, one Bishop implored the faithful not to support President Lula’s chosen successor, Dilma Roussef.

These examples indicate how this platform and online, participatory tools will be of use in years to come. No matter whether it goes “viral” and becomes a household name, Eleitor 2010 and other transparency initiatives have already become game-changers this election year.

Blogger fritzmorgen posts[RUS] pictures of Anastasia Denisenko, a regional leader of “Molodaya Gvardia”, Russian pro-Kremlin youth movement. The movement officially agitates against alcoholism and drug abuse, although the unofficial pictures depict quite the opposite. The blogger also supplies the posters of the various club parties sponsored by the movement.

In response to the installation of cameras at certain traffic lights, Vexed Bermoothes says: “I feel that in a ‘nation of laws' Government must be clear about how efforts like this are authorised, how they will be used…otherwise, the exercise starts to smack of ‘big brother' intrusiveness.”

This summer's wildfires made it possible to learn a lot about the role that the Russian Internet community plays in the society. We have seen that the social media activists were able not only to provide independent sources of information [ENG] but also to cooperate with each other [ENG]. There is one additional dimension, however.

Despite the initial, politically neutral position, bloggers found themselves in a situation where they had to, unwillingly, participate in a political clash. It’s not only that bloggers were critical of the poor governmental response to the disaster. The online community had a few direct clashes with the pro-government forces, primarily activists and supporters of the Russian ruling party Edinaya Rossiya [ENG] (United Russia). The relationship between the blogger community and the pro-government forces had a high level of hostility.

One of the first episodes of the virtual struggle between bloggers and United Russia supporters took place when bloggers caught [EN] United Russia forging photos, and Ruslan Gattarov, a senator and head of the ruling party’s youth wing Molodaya Gvardiya (The Young Guard), staging pictures of himself putting out fires. Gattarov later explained [RUS] that he had to upload fake photos in order to put some content on the site and had no time to deliver the real photos. He wrote [RUS] that bloggers ”could only stare at pictures and write nasty things” instead of putting out fires the way United Russia did. On his Twitter account, the senator was [RUS] even less diplomatic:

Ruslan Gattarov's tweet.

Some time after the scandal, United Russia announced [RUS] that Gattarov would be replaced as the leader of Molodaya Gvardiya. Although the official version said it was a planned replacement, a popular belief was that the Kremlin had been dissatisfied both with Gattarov's inadequate wildfires response and his ignorant public declarations. Piligrim-67, a blogger who helped to raise the issue, said [RUS] in an interview to a local media outlet that “effective and fast justice is possible only on the Internet.”

Gattarov also heads the United Russia's blogosphere council that was created in June 2010 and should improve the online image of United Russia as well as manage the network of its online supporters. The activities of the council had been investigated [RUS] by blogger spburger-senior.

Another major incident was a “black PR” attack against Yelizaveta Glinka (aka LJ user doctor-liza), a doctor and one of the leaders of the volunteer movement. The official website of United Russia published [RUS] an offensive article that accused Glinka of having political ties with the Spravedlivaya Rossiya [ENG] (A Just Russia) party. The article had a photoshopped image of Glinka with a zipped mouth. All the volunteers were accused by the United Russia ”experts” of having political connections to “A Just Russia.” The reason for the United Russia media outburst was that after a consultation [RUS] with her readers, Glinka refused to give an interview to the party website reporters.

A photoshopped image of Yelizaveta Glinka, made by United Russia

Glinka's readers were extremely against any kind of cooperation with the ruling party. “Do you understand what they need this information for? They want […] say that it was done by them”, wrote [RUS] jestianka.

Blogger g_zharkov wrote [RUS]:

Лиза, не свяывайтесь после того как сенатор Гаттаров потушил поддожженной самим собой дерево, а потом ушел на выходные - любое общение с ними позор для любого реального добровольца как мне вчера сказали молодые и реально помогающие ребята из Владимирской глубинки “давайте жить так, как будто их и вправду нет”

Glinka wrote [RUS] that United Russia would now try to close her LiveJournal account and would keep harassing her.

The offensive article on the United Russia website has only made bloggers angrier. LJ user avmalgin wrote [RUS]:

Это самая настоящая травля, по-другому назвать нельзя. Причем травля человека, который действительно занимается делом. Если вспомнить, что еще не так давно доктору Лизе ломали ее ЖЖ, который был основным инструментом в ее подвижнической деятельности, складывается вполне ясная картина.Все уже знают, как бесстыдно и неуклюже “партия власти” пытается пиариться на пожарах. […] Прикоснуться к “Единой Росии” - значит запачкаться. Но беда в том, что они пытаются испачкать тех, кто с ними не желает иметь дело.

Another clash took place between the Ushahidi-based project Help Map [ENG] (Russian-fires.ru), an independent, non-political platform, and the website of United Russia supporters, called Storonniki (“Supporters”). The banner of Help Map was placed misleadingly under the information about Storonniki's own coordination center, and the organization ignored Help Map's requests to re-position the banner.

Screenshot of the misleading banner placement

On August 21, Igor Cherski, another leader of the volunteer movement, drew attention to the inappropriate banner. Cherski wrote [RUS] on his blog:

Ваш баннер и ссылка на “Карту помощи” появились вот здесь: [www.storonniki.info]
Вы в курсе происходящего? Вас использовали или теперь вы работаете вместе со сторонниками ЕР? Просто интересно, ничего личного.

The question raised by Cherski caused another wave of of anger among bloggers. LJ user eresiru called it [RUS] an ideological mistake that would lead to total disappointment of the supporters of Help Map. Convincing people that Help Map had nothing to do with United Russia wasn’t an easy task. The site already had a disclaimer that the project had no affiliation with any political group, but now the creators had to add an explanation [RUS] on the top of the page that they were not cooperating with any politicians, and United Russia in particular, since it acted immorally throughout the disaster. Eventually, the banner was removed from Storonniki website, and Cherski acknowledged [RUS] that Help Map had nothing to do with the Russian ruling party.

Later, however, i_cherski dedicated a special post to the clarification of his position in regard to United Russia. He emphasized that the behavior of United Russia had been nothing to be proud of, but suggested that the online community should not automatically disregard any cooperation with United Russia activists. Some bloggers opposed Cherski’s idea:

“The best thing we can do is ignore them,” wrote [RUS] eckero.

“Everything they touch turns into farce. They spend money on PR without any real effect,” radvi_sasha responded [RUS].

Blogger kaktuso concluded that there was no sense in helping even the reasonable members of the party since it would do nothing but promote United Russia.

Unfortunately, the clashes weren't limited to online space only. On August 28, doctor-liza published a post about a visit of an unknown male, who entered through the open door and threatened her. She wrote [RUS]:

Он встал около двери нашей кухни - со сложенными за спиной руками.
С акцентом он спросил
- Это ты? “Справедливая помощь?”
- Я. Руки из - за спины выньте.
- Ты, б…дь, чего хочешь?
- Что бы Вы ушли.
- Уйдешь отсюда ты. Сука. Б…ь. Через тридцать дней. Б…ь.Насовсем.
И так несколько раз.

Then the man promised to return and left. Glinka asked volunteers to forgive her for getting them involved in a dangerous situation, asked them to stop visiting her and promised to increase security measures. Still, it is unclear if this episode is connected with the earlier conflict with United Russia.

Two “imagined communities” in Russia: TV audience and online audience

The bloggers' community has demonstrated not only the feeling of dissatisfaction, but a high degree of hostility towards the government and United Russia. Opposition to the government was a common denominator for the majority of online activists, despite the fact that volunteers’ platforms had no political or oppositional background.

The critical attitude of the blogosphere differed significantly from the perception of the wildfire events by the majority of Russians. A poll by Levada Center showed [RUS] that most Russians thought that the government's response had been good, while the support ratings of the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev (73%) and prime minister Vladimir Putin (78%) had even slightly improved. 27 percent of the respondents said their opinions about the state’s leadership had improved, 57 percent said that it had remained unchanged and only 12 percent said that it had become worse. The most popular answer about the cause of the wildfires (39 percent) was that they were a natural phenomenon caused by extreme weather, and that no one could be held responsible for it.

Aleksey Grazhdankin, deputy director of Levada Center, explained [RUS] that the numbers depended on how the information of the wildfires had been presented to the public by the mainstream media (MSM). TV-watchers and bloggers had completely different sets of information. The blogosphere was full of firsthand information about the scale of the disaster, while the MSM avoided dramatization and focused more on the government’s response than on the disaster itself or its victims.

In this case we can see that the Internet actually triggers offline activity (and is not making people more passive, as it is sometimes argued), because it provides an independent picture of reality, shows that action is required and suggests ways of facilitating this action. ”Enlightened” bloggers are relatively few in Russia (according to various estimates, between 20,000 and 50,000 people), and are completely outnumbered by the majority who uses the MSM as a major source of information, which often has a pro-government slant.

Benedict Anderson, a renowned historian, approached the media as a mechanism of formation of social groups with a common identity, which he called “imagined communities” [ENG].

The wildfires have shown that there are two very different “imagined communities” in Russia: TV viewers and social media users. They have different, and often quite opposite, attitudes, which affect how they act. The consumption of information online is deeply interrelated with social interaction, and, due to this and other factors, the Internet community is a much stronger, more effective and united, “imagined community.”

If in the previous article we argued [ENG] that the unaccountability of the government had triggered online cooperation, in this case we see that the degree of cooperation depends on the information source. To be provoked by the state’s unaccountability, people should first be informed that the government is unaccountable. This is what has been done by the Russian social media, whose approach is so different from MSM.

The divide between the two communities is deepening, although the TV community is still the decisive majority. The balance between the passive majority and the active minority presents an electoral dilemma: which political strategy should the Russian leaders choose to address both “imagined communities”?

In his recent article, Alexey Sidorenko suggests [RUS] three scenarios for development of the Russian Internet – liberalization, preservation of the current ambivalent status quo, and a significant increase of censorship and filtering. I would like to add the fourth scenario, a futuristic one, that would suggest the aforementioned divide to take place and to form a dual state – the “virtual” one, made up of netizens, and the “real” one, made up of the TV spectators. We may assume, however, that in this case the authorities will do anything to make Internet as close as possible to the TV model [ENG].

Ali Abdulemam at the Arab Bloggers' Workshop in Beirut, 2009

Outrage over the arrest of a Bahraini human rights activist has sparked an outpouring of support from bloggers and human rights advocates around the world.

On September 5, Global Voices Advocacy reported the arrest of Bahraini blogger and Global Voices contributor Ali Abdulemam for allegedly “publishing false news” on BahrainOnline.org, the platform he co-founded in 1999 (the site is currently down and it is suspected that authorities have gained control of the password).  The arrest, thought by many to be part of a larger sectarian crackdown in Bahrain, has sparked a solidarity campaign, a Facebook group of support, and a petition.  International groups, including Human Rights Watch, FrontLine Defenders, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, and Reporters without Borders have condemned the arrests.

Who is Ali Abdulemam?

Ali Abdulemam co-founded BahrainOnline.org in 1999 and as the site grew to become #1 in Bahrain, subsequently ascended to become one of the country's top bloggers. In 2005, he was arrested along with two of his colleagues, and released 15 days later. He joined Global Voices Advocacy in 2008 and attended that year's Global Voices Summit.

Sami Ben Gharbia shares more about the blogger:

Ali Abdulemam is a leading Bahraini blogger and Global Voices Advocacy author, and founder of Bahrain’s popular BahrainOnline forum. He a pioneer among Arab activists, using the internet to militate for peaceful reform. He inspired many young Bahrainis and Arabs to use the internet to express themselves and engage in spirited debate.

Mauritanian blogger Nasser Weddady, on his blog Dekhnstan, writes of Abdulemam's character:

Ali is a free-thinker, a father of three children, and more importantly the kind of voices for reform the West has been eager to see emerge in the region. His arrest is yet another blow to a growing movement for civil rights reform across the region. I hope he will not be forgotten like many other young Arabs whose only crime is to want to have a voice.

Hussain Yousif, who was arrested along with Abdulemam in 2005, had this to say of his close friend:

Ali is looking for change. The change Ali believed in is not impossible and is not diabolical. Ali wanted to give the people the chance to express thier feeling and dreams, to discuss and negotiate, to correct each other mistakes and to learn to respect each other. That was his project in Bahrain in online forum more than 10 years ago.

An Outpouring of Solidarity

Bloggers from across the Arab world and beyond have expressed their support for Abdulemam.  Bahraini blogger Mahmood, of Mahmood's Den, wonders what this means for Bahrain's bloggers and activists:

Abdulemam joins tens, possibly hundreds, more apprehended Bahrainis all accused or charged with some malicious intent against the ruling regime. According to most operating human rights organisations in the country, they have had their rights violated and some even went as far as accusing the security services of applying systemic torture on some of those incarcerated.

I fear that this latest development further degrades the country’s reputation and gives some credence to the charges of it being an enemy of freedom of expression and that of human rights too.

Guatemalan blogger and GV contributor Renata Avila had this to say of the circumstances:

Mi amigo, el bloguero de Bahrain Alí Abduleman, fue arrestado por “difundir información falsa”, una tendencia que se esparce peligrosamente en todos los rincones del mundo, ante gobiernos represivos que no aceptan la mirada crítica de los ciudadanos. Espero sea liberado pronto, que se respete el debido proceso, que se cuide de su integridad física y no se sea sometido a tratos crueles, inhumanos o degradantes.

On her blog A Tunisian Girl, GV contributor Lina Ben Mhenni writes:

Hardly does the sun rises without learning about the arrest of a blogger or online journalist . Examples are abundant Fatma Arabicca , Zouhair Makhlouf , Abdulsalam El Baroudi , etc…

…I hope that Ali will be released soon . I also hope that he will be in a good health.

Sonam Ongmo, a Bhutanese blogger based in New York, reflects on the situation on her blog Dragon Tales, writing:

As I write this, I count my blessings. There are many who on this very day cannot be facing the same. For instance a blogger colleague from Global Voices Ali Abdulemam from Bahrain. He was arrested earlier today by Bharaini authorities for spreading “false news” on his blog which has since been taken down by the authorities. I saw the message this morning and did the little I could - tweeting and posting this on FB. But now that I have time to sit down and think about my own situation its made me think of others who have not been so lucky.

Photo by Jillian C. York