Zeinhom Morgue -November 21-

A little before midnight on November 20th @fazerofzanight, @sumayaholdijk and myself (@bamyabombom), during the clashes on BabElouk Street in #tahrir, ran into @baha2saber. He was extremely distressed about a phone call he had received from a family member of a martyr that had just arrived at the morgue. Morgue officials and the prosecution official were convincing families to quickly sign incorrect reports and immediately bury their loved ones. We quickly head there with a few other people.

Once we arrived at the morgue, the families were extremely distressed and did not want any of us anywhere near the morgue. We explained to them why we were there, how it is not uncommon for the prosecutor official to issue fraudulent reports citing different causes of death such as heart attacks rather than gunshot wounds, in some cases they may even insert or remove evidence from the body, especially if the cause of death can implicate one of the state's institutions. We also slowly explained to the families why a State Security Intelligence Prosecutor cannot be present during the forensic examination because the people who were killed were either killed by the Military Police or Central Security Forces, this would clearly be a conflict of interest if they would be supervising the forensic report. Within a few minutes the families had calmed down and informed us that prior to our arrival morgue officials informed the families that foreign agents and money hungry journalists looking for a quick buck would be coming. We reassured them once again that we were activists from #tahrir and we were not gaining anything other than ensuring that their children's death would not be in vain, that those who were responsible for their deaths would be held accountable and we were here to stand in solidarity and honor their loved ones. The family members then agreed to have us advocate on their behalf and we started negotiating with morgue officials.

At first we said that we were there trying to find the body of a relative, they took us into a room with unclaimed and unidentified bodies placed on trays strewn onto the floor. The stench in the room will never leave my memory, some of the bodies in that room were not #tahrir and were unclaimed for over a month. As we looked around for evidence to implicate #SCAF and #CSF for these brutal murders, morgue officials realized that we were not trying to identify a body and they started pushing us out of the fridge, they shut fridge and we were not allowed in again for the rest of the night. Family members of the martyrs who were in the morgue then intervened immediately and said they wanted us there and they wanted us to take pictures. This enraged the morgue officials and started pushing us out of the morgue, while family members of the martyrs were pushing the other way sandwiching between them. Eventually we managed to hold our ground inside the morgue, but then the prosecutor official refused to perform the forensic examination unless we left the morgue. When @fazerofzanight insisted to supervise the forensic examination as the families of the martyrs had requested that she attend, the State Security Intelligence officer issued a warrant to detain @fazerofzanight. The morgue officials then switched off the lights inside the morgue a cheap attempt to scare us out. At some point a man who claimed he was the uncle of martyr started creating a lot of commotion, he was shouting and screaming saying that all he wanted was to bury his nephew, he didn't care about the cause of death, he did not care about holding anyone accountable, "the dead have to be honored and you are making my nephew's soul suffer", the families once again changed their mind about wanting us there and so we told them that we understand and we left, on our way out a young man who was clearly distressed about the death of his brother spoke to the families again and they asked us to stay, at this point other activists and two human rights lawyers had arrived. The families apologized telling us that they were just really confused and upset and they just wanted the day to be over, but they did not want to let their childrens' deaths go unpunished. Interestingly enough, the man who had earlier created this commotion was sitting smugly inside the Morgue official's office.

The families decided that one of the lawyers must be present during the forensic examine before any of them would agree to signing the report, the lawyer was able to attend and observe one examination before the prosecutor official refused to continue working. This back and forth with the morgue officials was ongoing all night, some of the forensic examinations were supervised while others were not.

That night a total of 18 bodies arrived at the morgue and later we would find that there were 7 more bodies due to arrive, but because of our presence there they rerouted the bodies to other locations. Out of the 18 bodies that arrived only 1 had died of asphyxiation, while the rest had died from gunshots mostly targeted to the head region. When riot control and police want to disperse protesters they will shoot at arms and legs, but when they shoot at the head they are shooting to kill not to disperse.

When I reflect back on the events of the morgue, I realize here were families who were experiencing the darkest depths of grief and loss. That night three people had collapsed from grief and shock. Yet, morgue officials had no qualms to further exacerbate their suffering, through pointless emotional manipulation, so that they can cover up and exonerate from blame those who are ordering the killings of protesters in #tahrir. Those who have lost their children stand there pawns in a corrupt government's game. Not a seat for them to sit on, out in the cold standing or sitting on a sidewalk of a parking lot entrance, begging to be let in to see their children behind the iron doors of the morgue. No compassion, no respect, treating people like they are a nuisance, shouting and screaming at them, threatening to not release the bodies for burial unless people sign false forensic reports, forging death certificates, tampering with evidence, protecting those who are killing and murdering people. My heart goes out to the families of our #tahrir martyrs.

Photographs used were taken by @fazerofzanight

I Vote for: HUMAN DIGNITY

I just finished watching the graphic and horrific testimony of Samira Ibrahim who was tortured and assaulted by the Military Police. If one substitutes the Military Police with State Security then Samira's testimony takes us back to the days before #Jan25. Where violence, torture and humiliation are institutional practices. Human dignity, is one of, if not the most important aspect of democracy, assuming that by democracy we mean the right of individuals to to live in a state that represents their non-coerced views. With the upcoming elections, a supposed platform for democracy, one must not forget to question the space in which these elections are taking place. Do the institutions and powers currently in place, that are moving and shaping the political sphere show any respect for human dignity? When a political arena excludes human dignity how would you expect human dignity to find itself in the political sphere later on?

Any form of participation in voting, whether it is the referendum or the upcoming elections immediately signals consent and grants legitimacy to those who are shaping the political sphere. In our case a political sphere devoid of human dignity.

In #Jan25, Egyptians tore down what most media termed the "barrier of fear". When we vote, we are expecting to move forward, yet we have not addressed how the Egyptian Military Institution has systematically been rebuilding this "barrier of fear" since Mubarak was deposed on #Feb11. 6 months following the Mubarak's fall, 12,000 civilians have been tried in military courts. Trails that take minutes to reach verdicts often in the absence of lawyers and without the knowledge of their families. @fazerofzanight recounted, how a teacher in a village, told her there are no more youth in the village, all them have been detained by the military police. There have been many incidents not just of military tribunals for civilians, but also videos and testimonies exposing the brutal torture and humiliation of civilians by the Military Police. SCAF has been slowly confining the spaces for dissidence, by controlling information flow and their strategic use of violence and torture.

A few days ago during a "No Military Trials for Civilians" stand on Kasr El Nile Bridge, I spoke to several by-standers. Few knew the purpose of the stand and even fewer knew about the 12,000 civilians that have been court-martialed and none had ever heard of the virginity tests. Despite the fact that SCAF have issued statements acknowledging these situations. Yet, the most terrifying realization was that as I spoke to people and distributed fliers, many people were scared to be seen listening to me speak about SCAF's atrocities. At the sign of uneasiness, I would ask, "Are you scared talking to me?", the usual response was, "Yes, a bit". At the very level of individuals, people fear the military establishment, most people are unable to access honest and credible information, it is naive to even imagine that at this point elections would do anything to serve human dignity, when our participation is compliance to an institution that only wants to serve its own interests and human dignity is not one of them.

A revolution will not happen through complacency, negotiation or dialogue with those who drag human dignity through a pile of horse shit and run it over with their APCs, but rather through an unbridled collective rage of a people who would rather give up their lives than live another day in subordination.

This post was inspired through conversation with @fazerofzanight and @sumayaholdijk

Let's Talk about Sects, Baby...

The emergent alleged sectarian violence has sparked intense dialogue and attention once again on the relationship between Muslims and Coptic Christians in Egypt. According to Al Jazeera English the supposedly rising Salafi movement is at the heart of these tensions, "In the months after the toppling of Hosni Mubarak on February 11, there has been a sharp rise in sectarian tensions, fueled in part by a newly active ultraconservative Muslim movement, known as the Salafis". The representation of the Salafi movement portrays individuals as being extremist and fundamentalist, but pays little attention to the larger political economy connected to this rising movement. Additionally, no interpretation or analysis of the recent clashes has looked beyond or in any direction other than the binary divisions between Muslims and Christians for explanations of these clashes. The clashes have also been viewed as a testament to the failure of the military in asserting its control, but have rarely been thought in terms what these clashes succeed in achieving. This post will offer some questions that may serve as guidelines to allow a deeper analysis of the supposedly Muslim and Christian strife in Egypt.

It is practically indisputable that since Mubarak was deposed, the Salafis a group one had rarely heard of have been accused of orchestrating and fueling the recent tensions between Muslims and Christians. They are represented as a threat to Egypt's modernity and progress and conjure images of a Taliban style take over in everyone's mind. They are portrayed as a rising army of ignorant volatile extremists that will devour the rest of the peace loving Egyptians. Now, there is no denying that the Salafi inclination is a rising trend, yet I would argue that there is not enough evidence to indicate that they are truly representing a threat. While all the focus has been on the Salafis as overly zealous religious individuals there has been very little done to question the relationship between capital and this rising movement. Salafis are thought of as ascetics living for El Akhira, which often stops us from thinking about money, profit and the circulation of capital that surrounds the movement. I'm not talking about arms trading or sketchy foreign funding channeled towards underground terrorist cells. I'm really talking about the mundane day-to-day purchases, T.V. shows people are watching and advertising that revolves around this movement. There's money to be made from the Salafis and we often forgot this point. Salafis like most consumers have created specialized market niches that be targeted with a huge array of commodities and services. By ignoring this important relationship between capital and the Salafi movement we separate Salafi completely from society. They become a disconnected group that we do not understand and instead of us viewing them as consumers of a certain specialized commodity they become our number one public enemy. We then become willing to give up our freedoms in return for protection against them.

I have watched the representations of the Salafi threat sway even critics of the army's military trails of civilians towards a desire for the firmer fist of military rule. As evidenced by Al Jazeera's question in the same article I referenced earlier,"The question being asked is, Why is the country's new military leadership not doing enough to deter these attacks that have been repeating since the revolution? And why is the military not doing enough to address the root causes of this tension?". Now is this the right question to ask? Because the only answer such a question allows is one where the military leadership needs to detain more people, restrict more freedom and you use more violence. The different question I believe should be posed to this situation is not how the army is failing, but how is the army succeeding? What is the army, the old and current regime achieving through the framing of acts of sectarian violence?

The second question is not how the Salafis are creating Muslim/Christian tension, but rather what have the mechanisms over the last 40 years that separated Muslims and Christians have caused a segregation between the two? At a very young age, Christian students are removed from the classroom to attend their religion lessons. Even at a private international school there was a shroud of mystery and secrecy. The Christian religion teacher would come in and quietly signal the Christian students to leave the classroom. They would silently gather their things and leave. I think the crucial point here is that the very structure of the system unquestionably required a handful of students to leave. It wasn't that we all went to different classrooms for our religion class. It was that we remained in our classroom while they had to LEAVE. This is just one small example of the everyday institutional practices that are constantly separating between Muslims and Christians. Other things, such religion on our identity cards and the differences in zoning policies between mosques and churches. In fact it is these very practices that produce a sense of entitlement in Muslims and a sense of marginalization in Coptic Christians. Who puts these practices into action and how do these daily practices come into being? who are the winners and who are the losers, and for a truly nuanced perspective we must not limit our winner and losers to a polar Muslim/Christian discussion?

Many random and unrelated events are highlighted as sectarian conflict and are interpreted in a way to produce sectarian conflict. For instance somewhere in Egypt a Muslim girl is supposed to get married to her Muslim cousin, but instead would much rather marry her Muslim neighbor and runs away with him. What would the expected outcome of this situation be? Now to be clear this is not class specific I have known of upper-middle class women who have been 'promised' to their cousins from their father's side and when they decided to marry others their cousins have showed up at the Ma'zun with shotguns ready to blow the husband-to-be's brains all over the marriage certificate. Or how many Muslim women have we heard of or seen being forced to cover their heads by their families whether or not they want to, yet somehow once a Muslim woman or Christian woman has anything to do with anything from the opposite religion, it become transformed into this huge sectarian ordeal and we seem to forget that this has little to do with religion as much as it has to do with women and their right to make their own choices. So by highlighting the difference of religion of people in conflict are we denying that these conflicts constantly happen outside a sectarian context? Are we asking the right questions when we make it about Muslims and Christians or are we just producing sectarian conflict by virtue of focusing on religion? Isn't it more of a question about women being able to choose who they want to be with and what religion they want to follow, much rather than a sectarian division? So why are we hell-bent on ignoring this line of questioning and only willing to focus on this idea of a suppressed civil war?

I hope that this post sheds light a line on a missing line of questioning that may provide us with certain answers that may prove to be fruitful in understanding and dealing with what may or may not be a sectarian conflict.

This post was theoretically inspired by James Ferguson and the content of this post was inspired by conversations with @yasminb @sumayaholdijk

Revolution LITE isn't Going to Cut it

I woke up this morning to the news of Maikel Nabil Sanad's farcical military tribunal. Sanad was sentenced to three years in prison with charges of insulting the military and spreading false information about the military. He was tried in the absence of a lawyer, because the army set the sentencing date for tomorrow. Many believe that his blog post "The Army and the People are not One Hand"(also available in English) where he uses a chronological evidence based argument to support this claim, was the reason behind the military's targeting of Sanad. Sanad is an Egyptian blogger who describes himself as a pacifist and holds extremely controversial views about Egypt's mandatory military conscription and peace with Israel, which many claim made him an easy target for discrediting by the military.

Following the deposing of Mubarak, the military has failed to convict any of those associated with the old regime, but has swiftly managed to convict via military court, within hours, protesters under charges of thuggery and other fabricated charges. The military has also engaged in wide-spread torture, intimidation and brutal dispersal of protesters. The list of restrictions on freedom, human rights violations and impediments to the fulfillment of the #Jan25 demands is long and well documented and can be easily obtained by searches on google and youtube. Every action by the army sets a precedent, when unchallenged effectively allows yet another action that strips even more people away from their basic human rights under the guise of stability and patriotism. For example, had people effectively mobilized for Amr El Beheiry, the army would not have targeted Sanad.

The #Jan25 uprising has been spatially confined to #Tahrir Square and temporally confined to the weekend. It has constantly been hammered into our heads that its great to express our dissent, but lets not disrupt safety, security and people's day-to-day livelihoods. We have to work, be productive, look forward to building #Egypt and show our objection on #Friday. Saturday the military usually does some abominable act or issue some horrible decree, then issue a strange and vague communique denying these incidents or fabricating some intricate lie. There is not much to say about this other than it seems that the Egyptian army is engaged in psychological warfare with the #Egyptian people, nothing less than George Orwell's #nineteen eighty-four. The military is seemingly using the infamous #doublethink tactic to control and sway public opinion.

There are many there who will unequivocally, without hesitation, attack those who criticize the actions of the military, because of a deep-seated fear of instability. You might be comfortable now, you might be changing your car and you might be making good money, but the economic, political and social trajectory in Egypt are all related. The political arena is in place to ensure that the economic policies serve specific people. When these people are carrying guns, they will not give up either and allow for the loss of their interests. It is a trajectory and while you might feel you have stability what you don't realize is that slowly economic disparity is creeping in and in a few years the material belonging you wanted to maintain by wanting stability are no longer within your economic reach. So keeping dissent in #Tahrir to please others and garner their support is just not going to cut it, not criticizing the army will allow them to constantly push the limits of our freedom, a democracy within a cage, that will never allow real social change. Revolution involves disruption and the while the price of freedom is high and immediate, the price of its absence is even higher on the long run. Whether its #KhaledSaid #AmrElBeheiry or #MaikelNabil, whether you are politically active or not, whether you care about freedom of speech or not, the day you step in the way of the interests of the Egyptian Military Junta deliberately or by accident, justly or unjustly, they will swiftly and mercilessly sweep you out of their way.

This post was inspired through social media conversation with @fazerofzanight

Théâtre de l'Absurde de L'Egypte -Part 1- Zahi Hawass

Many Egyptians were outraged when they heard that Zahi Hawass had been appointed the position of the new Minister of Antiquities by the Essam Sharaf cabinet after his much celebrated resignation as Chief Antiquities Official. Despite his fame, Hawass is not necessarily internationally respected as an Egyptologist or scholar as much as he is famous for his resemblance to Indiana Jones. Hawass was even featured in a Hell's Kitchen style reality show Chasing Mummies by the History Channel, I don't see Gordon Ramsay appointed as the Minister of Agriculture. Most of those who know him and have worked with him personally attest to his megalomania, incompetence and corruption and yet openly admit that masturbating his ego is an important supplement to applications for permits for excavation and research in Egypt. Regardless of what Hawass's reasons were for his resignation, many seasoned and young archeologists were celebrating his resignation and considered it a victory of the #Jan25 uprising. His recent appointment as the Minister of Antiquities came as a shock considering his unequivocal support for deposed President Hosni Mubarak . There is no doubt that the Essam Sharaf cabinet and the Supreme Council of Armed Forces were aware of his position during the #Jan25 uprising, but regardless they still went ahead and appointed him as the new minister of the antiquities, despite their promises of a new fresh government free of elements of the old regime. The hypocrisy of the new government and the army is apparent, but Hawass's decision to honor the #Jan25 uprising by creating a revolution exhibit to be hosted in Cairo and 14 other European countries is the cherry on top of the Egyptian political theatre de l'absurde.

Most people have been enraged by the blatant hypocrisy of not just Zahi Hawass, but other public figures. The absurdity is seen as a testament to the incompetence or hypocrisy of the new regime, but the absurdity is rarely viewed as a tool of oppression in and of itself. Hawass has not suffered a blow to the head (though it might do him some good) where he's lost his memory and can stand there straight-faced commemorating an uprising that had deposed a leader he clearly supported in his widely aired interview with BBC. There is also no doubt that Hawass, the army and the Essam Sharif cabinet are completely aware that many Egyptians have not forgotten his statements during the uprising. If we look at how the state and its different elements represent themselves to the public as an intentional act of asserting their power, then we can look at absurdity as a state spectacle of its power. Man in the theatre de l'absurde is a puppet that has no control over his actions, powerless to change a meaningless world around him. Like Sisyphus, man's efforts are futile, repetitive and meaningless. Most of us react to the state's absurdity either with anger or amusement at their incompetence or hypocrisy, but rarely do we think of it as a deliberate message and tool to render clear logical thought, action and opposition meaningless and futile. The state's repeated and pervasive transcripts of absurdity construct the stage and plot of the theatre de l'absurde where they send a clear message that Egyptians are the powerless protagonists.

This post was theoretically inspired by James Scott's Domination and the Hidden Arts of Resistance: The Hidden Transcript and dedicated to the passionate committed Egyptologists that I know, whose names I won't mention so they can apply for permits for excavations and research.

What's Wrong with Minumum and Maximum Wages?

Over the last few months I have been following the Egyptian workers movement and demands. This post will be extremely succinct. One of the workers' top demands is setting a monthly minimum wage of 1200 L.E and setting a maximum wage of 20,000 L.E. I've watched my revolutionary socialist friends celebrate the renationalisation of many private companies. As peachy as this sounds to you there are a few things to consider and must be brought to the dialogue.

Whether you are making 1,200 L.E, 20,000 L.E or 100,000 L.E your labor is still being exploited. If you are not owning the means of production then your labor is always under-valued. That is the only way profit is made. How else do you think profit is made? First of all, say you work in a glass factory, there is equipment and raw materials. It costs 5 L.E to make a glass without paying your labor. Yet the most essential factor to converting this raw material to a glass is the labor power. Now your boss will pay 5 L.E for this Labor. The owner then proceeds to sell this glass for 15 L.E because that is its value on the market. That's 5 L.E profit, but that glass would not have existed were not for the labor, so labor value is really 10 L.E not the 5 L.E you were getting paid. The glass cannot exist without the labor so the conversion from raw material to a glass is really all done by the labor and can only be done by the labor. So now you might ask, what about the owner, the glass can't be made without his investment. Actually, that assumption is incorrect, the reason the glass cannot be made without his investment is because he's monopolized and acquiesced both the means of production and possibly even the rights to the raw material. Not because his role is essential for the production process. Many people argue that the owner has invested so much, the owner of a factory or a piece of land has the right to make a profit, he owns the factory. Actually this is when history comes in. All ownership had to come to be through exclusion of others, and no historical process of ownership was devoid of violence and oppression used to exclude others from the right of ownership to a piece of property whatever that may be. As long as someone owns a means of production historically it had come to be through violence. Minimum wages and maximum wages whatever they maybe will never lead to social justice, at best they might just lead to a "little bit better" exploitation.

Secondly, when the state steps in to nationalize companies and factories, the labor is still exploited. The state essentially replaced the owner. The desire to profit from production automatically places the labor force in a position of exploitation. It doesn't matter if its an individual, a state or an institution. The only way to avoid this exploitation would be to change how we produce. Instead of producing for profit, production must be geared towards need. Where the means of producing is not solely owned by anyone. This would mean that you would make the glass and if the profit on the glass you made was 5 L.E then you would own that, so instead of getting 5 L.E you would be getting the 10 L.E it took for you to make that glass.

Thirdly, what do you think is going to happen when instead of getting 5 L.E for a glass you get 7 L.E? Well, first of all owners need to meet profit margins so to get their 5 L.E in profits, the owner will now need to sell his glass for 17 L.E, meaning that price paid for a glass increases. So say you now need to buy a glass? Do you know what that does to your purchasing power? Absolutely nothing. In other words setting minimum or maximum wages will lead to inflation keeping you at the very same position you were in before your wages increased.

So obviously at this point many of you reading this post will say, "You are calling for extremely radical changes to economic systems. This is extremely unrealistic". Well my response is if this unrealistic to you then don't sit dreaming of social justice. There will never be social justice while labor is exploited. You are now probably thinking, "As nice as all this sounds how is this post relevant to the current debate on Egypt's minimum and maximum wages?". Simply put, and just to please the fake self-proclaimed radicals out there, the cap in this dialogue should not be placed on maximum wages, but as a first step to true social justice, the cap should be placed on profit margins.


This post inspired by my very rudimentary understanding of Marx's Das Capital and conversations with @atlemk

4 WAYS YOU CAN HELP FREE MOHAMED RADWAN WITHOUT GETTING OFF YOUR COUCH

1) CIRCULATE THE NEWS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA: The more people that know about this the harder its going to be for the American and Egyptian governments to push this under the rug. You can SHARE this note with all your friends, Post the following links to your TWITTER FEEDS #FreeRadwan, FB STATUSES or YOUR BLOGS, Talk about it. JUST DON'T LET THIS DISAPPEAR.

Facebook Page
http://www.facebook.com/#!/free.radwan

Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/31/headlines/relatives_friends_of_detained_egyptian_american_in_syria_stage_cairo_protest

CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/03/31/syria.espionage/

VOA News
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/middle-east/Egyptian-American-Held-in-Syria-for-Allegedly-Taking-Photos-of-Protests-118785654.html

AOL News
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/28/family-of-us-prisoner-mohamed-radwan-in-syria-were-worried-he/

Daily News Egypt
http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/egypt/protesters-demand-syria-release-egypt-detainee-mohamed-radwan.html

Ahram Online
http://english.ahram.org.eg/~/NewsContent/1/64/8971/Egypt/Politics-/Mother-of-Egyptian-detained-in-Syria-pleas-for-rel.aspx

Associated Press
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5itaf_jqBCnHh-7XdY_BArbL9iuFg?docId=f1413ee4f63a4aafa9f79426aba1c14c

Nora Shalaby's Blog (His Cousin)
http://almahrusa.blogspot.com/2011/03/muhammed-radwan-arrested.html

Tarek Shalaby Blog (His Cousin)
http://www.tarekshalaby.com/2011/03/my-cousin-radwan-detained-in-syria/


2) CONTACT the media and DEMAND continued coverage, a suggested letter has been already drafted you can just copy and paste it, as well as a compiled list of addresses that is ready to be copied into the email. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS COPY AND PASTE

List of media emails:
nytnews@nytimes.com, executive-editor@nytimes.com, thearts@nytimes.com, bizday@nytimes.com, foreign@nytimes.com, metro@nytimes.com, national@nytimes.com, sports@nytimes.com, editor@usatoday.com, loudounextra@wpni.com, kerin_oconnor@dennis.co.uk, simon_davies@dennis.co.uk, picturedesk@mirror.co.uk, letters@theherald.co.uk, newseditor@independent.co.uk, legal.department@independent.co.uk, zeitiminternet@zeit.de, redactie-i@telegraaf.nl, woche@tpg.com.au, dasecho@videotron.ca, redaktion@dasecho.com, journal@journal.lu, abonnement@journal.lu, masson@lemonde.fr, editorial@francemag.com, dimanche@ouest-france.fr, direct@humanite.fr, abonnements@lexpress.fr, web@publikompass.it, publicidadinternet@abc.es, economia@abc.es, fotografia.madrid@abc.es, gente@abc.es, ilustracion.madrid@abc.es, diseno@abc.es, internet@abc.es, atencionclientes@prisacom.com, sch@chuvashia.ru, press.int@aljazeera.net, comments@alhurra.com, webdesk@france24.com, hrwdc@hrw.org, berlin@hrw.org, hrwbe@hrw.org, hrwgva@hrw.org, hrwuk@hrw.org, paris@hrw.org, hrwsf@hrw.org, toronto@hrw.org, feedback@humanrightsfirst.org, mena@hrw.org, info@ictj.org, rsf@rsf.org, info@frontlinedefenders.org, malaf@kuttab.org, richard.howitt@geo2.poptel.org.uk, richard.howitt@europarl.europa.eu, iseek@un.org, newsroom@aila.org, jhertling@bloomberg.net, barden@bloomberg.net


Draft email for media:
Dear Editor,

Thank you for your continued coverage of the American-Egyptian engineer Muhammed Radwan, who has been unlawfully detained by Syrian authorities since March 25, 2011. As his friends, family and concerned citizens of the world, we are extremely concerned about his safety and health. Despite all our efforts to reach him, the Syrian authorities continue to deny him access to his family, and American and Egyptian representatives in Syria. At the moment we do not know where he is or what has happened to him during this past week. We are well-aware of the brutal Syrian regime and their long history of human rights violations and fear that Radwan is suffering serious human rights' violations. We implore you to provide as much evidence as possible and provide continued coverage and investigation of his whereabouts. We also ask you to investigate and report on the positions of both the Egyptian and American governments and their efforts to release him. This is crucial not only in potentially saving his life, but in also stirring up the opinions of the international community and leaderships to condemn the actions of the Syrian regime and brutal dictatorships.

These will be of use to you:
Tarek Radwan (resides in D.C., brother): tradwant@gmail.com, 001-202-550-5835
Nora Shalaby (resides in Egypt, cousin and activist): norashalaby@gmail.com, 002-011-447-7757
Tarek Shalaby (resides in Egypt, cousin and blogger): info@tarekshalaby.com, 002-018-499-4998

3)Mail the State Department. Here is a draft of the letter that you can drop in nearest mailbox
Address it to:
Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

OR Go to the web-site of the State Deptartment
Under topic choose - US Foreign Policy - Middle East as recommended by Jemilu
Then just paste the text.

Draft of Letter:
Dear Secretary Clinton,

We are confident that by now you are well aware of the situation with Mr. Muhammed Radwan, an American-Egyptian engineer, who was detained by the Syrian Government on March 25th. Mr. Radwan has been detained without being charged and made, what appeared to be, a coerced confession on Syrian T.V. on March 26th. His “confessions” include selling Syrian protests pictures to a Colombian, as well as recently visiting Israel. For Radwan to make these completely false statements on Syrian national TV points to the fact that he was threatened by his detainees. Since March 25th, no one has been granted access to Radwan. His father, Abu Bakr Radwan, is currently in Syria speaking with Syrian State Security as well as American and Egyptian ambassadors in an attempt have his son released, or the very least, be granted access to him. Syria has a very long history of human rights violations and we fear that Radwan is being tortured in Syrian prisons.

Mr. Radwan is an American citizen and we call on you to condemn the actions of the Syrian government and request his immediate release. As stated above, the Syrian government is known for its blatant disregard for international human rights treaties and laws. It is unacceptable for an American citizen to be subjected to such treatment and we request that you take immediate action to remedy this matter.

Sincerely,
Your name

4)Call the State Department at 202-647-4000 and ask to leave a voice mail regarding an INTERNATIONAL EMERGENCY

Suggested Script:
Dear Secretary Clinton,
The Syrian Government has detained American Engineer Mohamed Radwan and refuses to reveal information about his well-being and whereabouts. The Syrian government's lack of cooperation with both the American and Egyptian government and blatant disregard to international laws and regulations make it extremely likely that Mr. Radwan will be subjected to serious human rights violations. We strongly call on you to unequivocally condemn the actions of the Syrian government. Failing to condemn the actions of the Syrian government and to pressure them to immediately release Mr. Radwan or at the very least adhere to Human Rights' laws implicates the U.S government as a potential accomplice to crimes against humanity.

@nevsh Mohamed Radwan's cousin compiled the information in this post with me