- Update: Egyptian police beat protesters demanding constitutional reforms
- Police confiscate media cameras
- Ayman Noor calls it "an insulting image" that soldiers deny freedom of expression
In Cairo yesterday armed police cracked down on a few dozen protesters demanding reforms to Egypt's arcane constitution. In Washington meanwhile, well-heeled Egyptian diplomats turn up with worrying regularity at events to discuss internet censorship and citizen journalists. The land of the Pharoh's is a chaotic shambles, tens of millions live in squalor and civil society kept firmly in check. But whether in downtown Cairo or more than 3,000 miles away in Washington, the representatives of Mubarak's police state are hard at work.
At a forum on Internet freedom, a speaker described how Egyptian bloggers routinely get arrested and tortured. A few minutes later an Egyptian diplomat piped up with a question.
He had to be asked to identify himself and didn't bother to deny that bloggers are tortured and thrown in the cells with common criminals. He just asked about plans to defend Google and others in repressive regimes.
As brazen as they are smooth, Egyptian officials know that because their country is an official "friend of the US", Cairo's undemocratic behavior always gets a pass in Washington. Contrast this with the sharp focus on Iran in the US media for its blatant abuse of the democratic movement. Why is whats wrong in Iran somehow OK in Egypt?
On Monday this week, the same Egyptian diplomat lurked at the back of yet another panel discussion about citizen blogging across the Middle East. This time it was at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
The diplomat wasn't there to lend a supportive word to the great heave for pluralism in Mubarak's sham democracy, but rather to take notes on the event to be sent back to Cairo overnight in a diplomatic cable.
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Continue reading Citizen bloggers 'white-anting' the Mubarak regime.