Ormai è chiaro, essere blogger e dissidenti (nella ormai ‘antica’ accezione usata per l’intellighentsjia dell’Europa centro-orientale pre-1989) è una cosa sola, in Egitto. Lo si era capito negli anni scorsi, ma il caso riportato oggi da Al Masri al Youm ha la valenza dell’episodio che descrive una condizione. Sia chiaro: la religione non c’entra niente, né la fede dei blogger. Ci sono musulmani e cristiani.
Around 30 Cairo-based bloggers and activists were arrested Friday morning on their way to Naga Hammadi, a town in the southern province of Qena, and the site of recent sectarian clashes between Muslims and Christians and a fatal shooting that killed six Coptic Christians on Christmas eve and a Muslim church guard.
The bloggers are among a bigger group of Egyptians that include politicians like Osama Ghazali Harb of the liberal Democratic Front Party, Kifaya leader George Ishaaq and Cairo university professor and opposition leader Mohamed Abul Ghar. Split in two separate groups, one en route to Naga Hammadi by train and the other by bus from Luxor, they were heading to the small town in order to meet Bishop Kirollos of the Naga Hammadi Diocese, in addition to the families of those who lost their lives in the violence a week earlier, not only in order to console them but also to show solidarity.
The group who was on the train, all younger activists, were stopped by the police, “their cell phones and identification cards were taken from them,” Abul Ghar told Al-Masry Al-Youm on the phone shortly after he spoke to one of the activists before his phone was taken from him, and apparently switched off immediately. According to Abul Ghar, they were taken to a Naga Hammadi police station, but it’s “unclear what will happen to them.” Among the 18 are prominent bloggers Wael Abbas, Mustafa el-Naggar, Ahmed Badawi, Shahinaz Abdel Salam, Mohamed Khaled known by his alias “Demagh Mak” and human rights activist Paula Abdo — himself an eyewitness to some of the clashes that occured earlier in Naga Hammadi following the shooting.