Help Our Fight for Real Democracy

The funny thing is that I got arrested that day, and the police confiscated my camera. But they let me go and gave the camera back after I fooled them into believing that they had deleted all the pictures by removing the batteries. In 2005, digital cameras were still a novelty for police who were accustomed to destroying analog film.

The presidential and parliamentary elections were marred by violence and death. Yes, death -- during the parliamentary elections, nine people were killed by police. It was all documented on my blog. And it was U.S. taxpayer money that funded the new police trucks, clubs, helmets and boots with which the police were equipped.

Of course Mubarak and his party won. But despite all the rigging, Ayman Nour, the leader of the liberal Al-Ghad, or Tomorrow Party, managed to get 1 million votes in the presidential election. And the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement won a fifth of the seats in parliament.

I suppose that could be considered progress. But then what did Mubarak do? He sent Nour to jail on charges of having forged the signatures he collected to establish his party. And today, hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as some of the movement's parliamentary members, are in prison on charges of having formed an armed movement.

I disagree with the Muslim Brotherhood and its manipulation of Egyptians' religiosity to achieve its political goals. But if we want a democratic country, we can't exclude any political sect.

The world may be afraid of an Islamist movement coming to power in Egypt, and that's why I believe in working on two levels -- advocating democracy while enlightening the people so that they make the right choice when the time comes for real democratic elections. That's why I called my blog Egyptian Awareness. The solution can never lie in supporting and funding a dictatorial regime to suppress the opposition.

Who's left? The bloggers. Those young fellows who think they're hotshot reporters, who dared to practice the first form of citizen journalism in Egypt. The ones who have been such a pain in the neck for the government, exposing corruption, negligence, violations of human rights and freedoms.

In the spring of 2006 -- the spring of democracy, as some have called it -- some judges became fed up with government interference in their rulings and decided to hold a sit-in. In support, a number of bloggers and activists decided to hold a parallel sit-in outside the building where the judges sat. Everyone who took part was arrested. Some of the judges were also assaulted during the raid. All those who were detained were treated inhumanely; some said they were tortured and sodomized.

Eventually, though, the authorities had to release them. And then they had to come up with another way to silence the blogs. They arrested secular blogger Kareem Amer and sentenced him to four years in prison on charges of insulting the president and insulting Islam with statements in his blog. Later, they arrested the Islamist blogger Abdul Monem Mahmoud on charges of belonging to a banned movement, the Muslim Brotherhood. He is now facing trial. Neither secularists nor Islamists are free to express their opinions online under Mubarak's "democratic" regime.

How much is enough to make Americans question why their money goes to support this government? We Egyptians want a fair struggle for our freedom. We'll never have it as long as Mubarak and his corrupt regime are propped up by U.S. aid. All we ask is: Give us a fighting chance.

wa2el_3abbas@yahoo.com

Wael Abbas blogs at misrdigital.blogspirit.com.