support freedom of expression in Egypt

The Egyptian authorities have been conducting a serious crackdown on bloggers (along with other dissidents who displease them). I haven’t read Alaa’s blog, but I read the Egyptian Sandmonkey’s regularly. Here’s what he has to say [emphasis mine]:

Currently there are about 48 detained,
6 of them are bloggers, and 3 of them are women. The best known is
Alaa, which makes him the posterboy of this campaign - but getting them
out is equally as important. Egypt
has fewer than 830 bloggers all in all, 60 of whom are political and
less than 30 are politically active. Now 6 of those are in jail - 20%
of all politically active Egyptian bloggers - and amongst them one of Egypt’s most highly profiled one….

Alaa
is a secular democracy activist, and a tireless advocate of freedom,
free speech and human rights. He organizes demonstrations and engages
in protests against all kinds of injustices in Egypt and is the winner of the international Best of the Blogs award from Reporters Without Borders last December….

Addresses for the Egyptian embassies in the US and Canada are available here, templates for e-mails to be sent to the embassies here, and the contact information for the person to e-mail in the US state department is here.
If you are a journalist or know one, help us spread the word by writing
about this or demanding your local newspaper write about this. If you
have a blog or a website and would like to raise awareness about this
issue, banners for the Free Alaa campaign can be found here and here. We could use any help we can get, so if you have any ideas or ways to help us, please do.

Free Alaa

I’ve sent e-mails. Please write to support this courageous young man, and freedom of speech.