Internet Intolerance

As the Egyptian Parliament is preparing a draft audio-visual law that has the potential to severely curtail the use of internet communication, a swath of the country’s youth continue to use online networking as a means of political opposition.

14 Facebook activists, who organize large protests like the 10,000 worker strike in the textile town of Mahallah in April of this year, were arrested without charges in late July. Democracy Digest suggests that “Egypt’s crackdown on Facebook activism reflects the authorities’ anxiety that protests have escalated over several months, generating perhaps the biggest wave of strikes since the 1940s”.