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Apparently, Facebook and general strikes don't mix well. At least not in Egypt.
Three days after Ahmed Maher Ibrahim used a Facebook group to gain support for a May 4 strike in Cairo, four unmarked vans surrounded his car and 12 men handcuffed and blindfolded him. He was brought to a police station and beaten, insulted and interrogated, according to a new Human Rights Watch report.
According to Maher, the officers did not accuse him of anything, but asked for the password of the May 4 Facebook group that news reports said he had started. They also asked him about members of the group he had never met. The SSI officers released him before dawn on May 8 with the warning that he would be beaten more severely the next time State Security detained him.
Never again will I snidely refer to Facebook as a mostly pointless waste of time. Great line from Maher, which he was quoted as saying before the strike:
“If we allow ourselves to fear them, we won’t do anything,” he told the BBC. “Then I would consider myself a partner in the crimes taking place in Egypt.”
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Jeremy Gantz is an In These Times contributing editor working at Time magazine.
