Wael Abbas is an internationally renowned Egyptian journalist, blogger and human rights activist who blogs at Misr Digital (Egyptian Awareness). He reported an incident of mob harassment of women, and broadcast several videos of police brutality. His actions lead to the conviction of police for torture, but he has been harassed by the Egyptian government, and his accounts with YouTube Yahoo were closed. YouTube has since restored his account and most of his videos. Facebook has deleted Wael’s account.
Wael continuously covered political activities in Egypt that don’t receive enough coverage in the traditional media like demonstrations calling for change in Egypt, sit-ins and workers strikes, published videos exposing election rigging and police violence against peaceful demonstrators especially the events of the presidential referendum in 2005 when he posted photos of the hired thugs who molested female activists and exposed the pro Mubarak demonstrators who get paid to demonstrate.
In September 2007, his YouTube account was shut down. All the videos he had sent to YouTube were no longer available. They included videos of police brutality, voting irregularities and anti-government protests. About 12 or 13 were of violence in police stations. He was shocked by YouTube’s decision.
Yahoo had shut down two of his email accounts, accusing him of being a spammer.
Human rights groups said that YouTube was shutting down a useful source of info on abuses in Egypt just as the government was increasing its crackdown on independent and opposition journalists. Twelve Egyptian journalists had been jailed between September and November 2007. Elijah Zarwan thinks that it was unlikely YouTube was reacting to official government pressure.
YouTube initially restored his account but not his videos, and said that his account was blocked because he failed to provide sufficient context about the violence. 187 of his videos were subsequently restored. Abbas has posted on his blog that Yahoo has restored his email account.
On November 1 2008, Facebook deleted Wael’s account; the account was later restored.
Abbas was announced the winner of a journalism award by the International Center for Journalists on August 24, 2007. He has also won the Human Rights Watch’s Hellman/Hammett Award 2008.
CNN named him Middle East Person of the Year 2007 and he was considered one of the Most Influential People in the year 2006 by BBC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wael_Abbas
http://www.misrdigital.com
http://www.youtube.com/waelabbas
http://twitter.com/waelabbas
http://waelabbas.jaiku.com
