Nov 14, 2010

Bloggers Live Dangerously



Lina and Asmaa in Cairo, Oct. 2010.
Source
Blogger and journalist Asmaa Alghoul from Gaza, whom I met at the Young Media Summit in Cairo, has received a death threat: Someone calling himself 'Masirek' has threatened to kill her in front of her son's eyes. Lina Ben Mhenni, who was also a participant of the summit, has written a solidarty post in French, where she rightly condemns Masirek's verbal attack. According to Egyptian blogger Tarek Amr, the threat was not prompted by any particular post, but by Asmaa's stances and points of view in general. Asmaa has been fighting against so-called honour killings and for the rights of Palestinian women.

Physical threats to bloggers, by the way, are not as rare as you might think. Even in Germany there have been cases of severe harassment, up to the involvement of Police - as has also been demanded in Asmaa's case. It is important to remember that threats, even if they aren't followed by action, are a) litigable and b) abuse, too. See this related post on verbal abuse for more information.

2 comments:

  1. The point is, I don't think the post the guy commented on has anything to do with his threat. He seems to be threatening her for hew stances and points of view in general.

    Anyway, let me try to translate the guys comment into English for you. And by the way, the world Masirek means Your Destiny, so most probably the guys mixed up the comment title with his nick name, or something.

    اسماء مصيرك قرب
    وابنك سيشاهد هذا وينتحر وستجلبين له العار ولاهلك لا تفكري حالك شاطرة المرة هادي حتنحرقي كمان وكلامي مش غبار وقتو اقترب كثير شوهتي صورة الشعب الفلسطيني والمرأة الفلسطينية

    Asmaa, your destiny is coming soon.
    And your child will witness it and might commit suicide then. You'll bring shame to him and to your whole family. Don't try to be smart. This time your heart will be burnt, and I am serious. You disgraced the image of the Palestinians and the Palestinian women as well.

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  2. Thanks so much for your translation and the missing information, Tarek! I will update the post accordingly.

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