Interested in human rights in the Middle East? Help here!
Several months ago, I had the idea to start a website integrating new decentralized technology with a topic that I take great interest in: those who are dealt with unjustly throughout the Middle East, from the democratic opposition and other political dissidents, to critical journalists, to abused minorities. I wanted a Wikipedia-like website for political prisoners throughout the Middle East for two reasons: 1) to follow the trend of decentralizing and democratizing the spread of information throughout the world by, effectively, allowing anybody to create an account and submit new information or edit existing information and 2) because I became frustrated with the prominent international human rights groups, who tend to focus only on celebrities in certain countries (usually celebrities because they were democracy advocates or religious dissidents–people I support entirely, but they are not the only ones abused) and especially tend to ignore these violations when they occur in countries that are friendly to the United States. Consequently, I created a website called the Alliance for Essential Liberties in the Middle East. This is an important experiment in virtual activism and to succeed it needs your help.
I intended the website to have two aspects: one as an informational database with as much information as possible regarding political prisoners around the region, and two as a center for action allowing people to perform on the frustration and indignation they felt as they read about people like Kareem Amer, Michel Kilo, or Idrees Boufayed.
Thus far, I have tried to focus on the informational part. Since I am only one person (and since third party contributions thus far have been extremely scarce), the amount of information is extremely small and–considering the current situation in our countries!–extremely unrepresentative of the hundreds of people in prison struggling for their rights. I have put the second half of the project (the action part) on hold until this database can be built up, and I can consult with others regarding strategies.
So, my intention in putting up this post is to gather as much support as possible to the information-building part of the website. This means that AELME.org needs people who are genuinely concerned with human rights in the region, especially in countries they love, to constantly monitor the news and post developments as they progress on the website as profiles. Eventually there would also be a blogging feature allowing you to draw more attention to select issues that might not fit so well into a profile. This kind of assistance is sorely needed, especially for countries which receive little attention worldwide because they are not influential in the region or because of a language barrier. Today the sections for many of those countries on the website are empty, when it is well known that many prisoners and other victims reside there. In the Egypt section, there are currently only three profiles, when it is known that there are dozens of prisoners (recently from the Muslim Brotherhood) languishing in prison for doing nothing wrong. Part of our responsibility is to perform retroactively by finding out about people who are already in prison and have been for some time with little attention either because they lacked the public connections or the resources to gather that attention.
If you are interested in helping this cause out, please, please, please consider going to AELME.org right now to create an account and begin contributing material. In a few weeks, I will be creating “Editor” positions for each section on the website and will be trying to fill them with those who have shown the most interest, integrity, and consistency in their posting.
Since this is a decentralized, democratic, and publicly-driven website, it needs all the attention and input it can get. Otherwise, it will fail. Please consider going to the website and forwarding this post to your friends so that they can find out about it and spread the news to others who might be interested. If you have any questions or comments, leave them below, or send me an e-mail at ysalahi@gmail.com.
(If you have a Facebook account, please consider joining this group to bring more attention to the project–thanks!)
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SECONDED! This is a very helpful and important tool. Not just for those who want to contribute but also for those who use it as a source of information. It has a lot of options and contacts that you can use to take further action rather than just reading about it, which makes it much better than having profiles on Wikipedia where you won’t be able to do much. It’s amazing what we can use technology for these days. I urge you all to get involved somehow.
The very least you can all do is link to it if you have any blogs or website. You can find some info and sample banners here.
Mad props for doing this Yaman!