Virtual politics

Their experience of political activism on Facebook leads two young Egyptians in opposite directions, writes Mohamed El-Sayed

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Publicly opposing authority -- be it social, political or religious -- in Egypt can be a risky business, which is perhaps why increasing numbers of Egyptians, like 20-something Israa Abdel-Fattah and Ahmed Maher, resorted to cyberspace to express their views. Blogging, though, was not going to prompt public action: instead, both hit on the idea of using Facebook to garner support for the issues in which they believed.

When textile workers at Mahala announced that they would strike on 6 April to force the government to respond to their demands to improve working conditions Abdel-Fattah and Maher used the social networking site to set up a Stay at Home group, urging friends to join, and calling for a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience to highlight the deteriorating conditions faced by the majority of Egyptians.

"We sent invitations to join the group to 160 people on Israa's list of friends and 140 on mine," says Maher. The outcome was unexpected: soon they had 60,000 members of the group committed to staying away from work on 6 April.

Abdel-Fattah went to sit at a café at 11am near the company she works for in downtown Cairo on the morning of 6 April. "Policemen in plainclothes entered the café and approached me," she recalls. Together with colleagues she was forced onto a microbus and driven to Qasr Al-Nil police station.

Entering a police station for the first time was a shocking experience for Abdel-Fattah. "I sat cross-legged on the floor of the cell, weeping from 3am till 9am, trembling with fear," she said. Later she was transferred to Al-Qanater prison where she spent 18 days behind bars. Reading the Quran and saying prayers were her only activities in the days before the minister of interior ordered her release.

Maher learned from Abdel-Fattah's experience. When another call for a general strike on 4 May began to spread he played a key role in sending invitations to Facebook members to join the civil disobedience. But having realised he might be detained by police on the strike day he went into hiding rather than face the heavy-handed approach used by the police towards political activists. Maher stayed on the run the days before and after the second strike. He slept in his car or in friends' apartments. "Sometimes I would drive to a desert area and spend the night in my car," he said.

Maher's phone calls, though, were being tapped, and when he told a friend over his mobile that he was driving down a particular street his car was soon stopped.

"Four carloads of plain-clothed police besieged my car as I was heading downtown." He was handcuffed and blindfolded, dragged across the floor, and regularly beaten over a 12-hour period.

"They wanted me to give them the password to my Facebook account," he says.

We, like you, love Egypt, too. But we know the Egyptian people more than you -- they are not ready yet for democracy, Maher was told by one of the officers.

Although Abdel-Fattah gained local and international attention when she was in custody -- some crowning her the president of the "Facebook Republic" -- in the wake of her imprisonment she stopped her Facebook activities.

Maher, though, is determined to continue.

"We are debating ways to best use Facebook to organise activities," he said. Despite constant threatening phone calls he is determined to transform his Facebook group into a political movement.

Last week, Maher was detained again by security forces in Alexandria for organising a peaceful march in celebration of the 23 July Revolution; and he was released this week.