Egypt’s YouTube Democrats
Monday, December 17th, 2007Today’s Washington Post has a piece by Jackson Diehl about human rights activists from Egypt who recently came to Washington to meet with American organizations about community organizing and new media strategies. I had the opportunity to meet these activists and offer my own advice and experience in a training session hosted by Freedom House, a human rights organization in Washington. There is a young generation of Egyptians that wants to move beyond the authoritarian ways of Hosni Mubarak and the Egyptian government. These activists deserve our support and friendship. Hopefully I helped them out a little in their efforts to bring human rights and democratic reforms to Egypt. Here is a quote from the Post article about one of the most energetic young activists from the group, Ahmed Samih.
“The majority of Egyptians are like us, under the age of 35,” said Ahmed Samih, the 28-year-old director of the Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies in Cairo.
Samih, a fearless man who says he has been a political activist since age 17, founded a Facebook group called “What happens when Hosni Mubarak dies?” Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt under “emergency law” since 1981, is 79. But he is noticeably fading. And Samih’s group has attracted 2,741 members, almost all of them Egyptian.
Ahmed and his fellow activists are a brave group of people. They are also very creative in applying new technologies to spreading the word about their cause. I wish Ahmed and his fellow freedom fighters luck in their noble pursuit of liberty for all Egyptians.
