In conjunction with FreeKareem.org, the Committee to Protect Bloggers is launching a mail campaign in support of imprisoned Egyptian blogger, Kareem Amer. (If you’re not familiar with the case of this unjustly-imprisoned blogger, please read FreeKareem’s FAQ.)

From April 7 through April 21, both organizations are encouraging their memberships to go analogue and write Kareem a letter or postcard.

There are several reasons for this departure from the digital.

First, Kareem can receive physical mail. Second, a sufficient amount of such mail will remind Egyptian authorities that this blogger, bloggers in general and prisoners of conscience over all, are not alone. When Kareem was being tortured several months ago, the focus of international media was instrumental in stopping it. Finally, it takes us out of our comfort zones and reminds us that what we do exists in the physical world with real consequences.

If you would like to write Kareem now, by all means do so, but we would also like to ask that, whatever you do, you write at least one letter to Kareem during the period from April 7 to April 21. Here is the address in English, followed by a link to the address in Arabic. (It goes without saying that the Arabic must be present on the letter to assure its delivery.)

Alexandria
Borg Al-Arab Prison
Room 1 Section 22
Prisoner Abdul Kareem Nabil Suleiman
The Arab Republic of Egypt
Kareem’s address in Arabic – mandatory to include on envelope

Read Alexandra Sandel’s article in Menassat. (She’s wrong about the dates – it’s two weeks, not one.)

Read Marshall Kirkpatrick’s article in ReadWriteWeb.

Read the Society of Professional Journalists’ post on their Press Notes blog.

Read DigiActive’s write-up.

Here’s a playlist for protests outside of Tibet proper, in the provinces of Gansu and Sichuan. Unfortunately, I could not make the embed code work, so you’ll have to click through.

Update: RSF also reports that Fouad is free.

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Global Voices asserts that Fouad Mourtada has been released from prison with a “full royal pardon.” If this is true, it’s fantastic news for Fouad. Not great news for free speech or Morocco, though, that it took a royal pardon. Can anyone confirm this?

Mourtada was sentenced to three years in prison for creating a fake Facebook profile of his country’s crown prince. Facebook claimed not to have assisted in identifying Fouad.

Update: Our playlist has been referenced and linked to by both the New York Times and Canada’s National Post.

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I’ve created a Committee to Protect Bloggers YouTube account and within that have created a Tibet Protests playlist. I’ve aggregated first-person videos from the protests as well as international news coverage. Please let me know if I’ve missed any substantive ones. I’ll also try to put together playlists for things as they go on, like the Sichuan crackdowns.

The Associated Press reports that today the Chinese government has blocked the video-sharing service YouTube. The block was in response to the posting of dozens of videos showing footage of the Tibet riots. Like last year’s Burmese riots, these have also been led by monks and have resulted in over 80 deaths so far.

This block comes after an attempt to severely curtail all video sharing sites open to Chinese in advance of the upcoming Olympic Games.

In advance of the March 14 elections there, Iranian authorities have blocked Yahoo there, according to Norooznews (via OpenNet Blog). Yahoo’s search engine, its web mail service Yahoo Mail, and its groups function, Yahoo Groups, have all been blocked. Background, from the International Herald Tribune.

Update: MidEast Youth confirmed in an email that Mousa has been released from prison. Confirmation in Arabic.

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We discovered, through MidEast Youth, that journalist and blogger, Osama Edward Mousa, has been arrested by the Syrian authorities.

No one knows where he was taken or where he’s exactly imprisoned within Damascus, and his friends and family fear that he is undergoing torture. Osama is an Assyrian Christian. Apparently he was arrested directly due to content on his blog, where he criticized the Syrian government and its economic policies.

Can anyone confirm this?