| Founded | 2008 |
|---|---|
| Location | New York City |
| Key people | David Keyes, Director |
| Method | Human rights |
| Website | http://www.cyberdissidents.org |
CyberDissidents.org is a human rights organization dedicated to promoting the voices of pro-democracy Internet activists in the Arab world and Iran. The group believes that highlighting the plight of individual democratic dissidents in the West affords a measure of protection against regime oppression.
Contents |
Founded in 2008, CyberDissidents.org focuses on autocratic Middle Eastern countries which deny basic liberties, primarily freedom of expression. The organization’s co-founder and director, David Keyes, served previously as coordinator for democracy programs under famed Soviet dissident, Natan Sharansky. Keyes has written for The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, National Review, The Jerusalem Post and other publications. He speaks Arabic, Hebrew and English.[1][2][3]
Relying on a broad network of bloggers in the region, CyberDissidents.org monitors, analyses and publicizes dissidents’ activities in the West. Its staff meet frequently with policy-makers in the United States, Middle East and Europe. CyberDissidents.org promotes linkage between foreign aid and human rights.
The organization has utilized the findings of psychology professor Paul Slovic who studied the phenomenon of indifference in the face of humanitarian disasters. Professor Slovic has written that highlighting individuals is the most effective way of provoking sympathy and concern for a cause.[4] This is seen in the organization’s “Featured CyberDissident” which focuses on a particular dissident’s story.
Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, served on CyberDissidents.org’s board of advisers for the first two years of its existence.
Keyes recently partnered with founding chairman emeritus of Human Rights Watch, Bob Bernstein, on a new human rights initiative.
Syrian dissident Ahed Al Hendi is the coordinator for Arabic programs at CyberDissidents.org. Al Hendi fled Syria and is currently a refugee living in the United States. Imprisoned and tortured by the Syrian regime, Al Hendi has worked with the Samir Kassir Foundation in Lebanon as its Syrian researcher and writes frequently in favor of democracy in the Middle East. He has been cited in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and writes for several Arabic papers including Al Mustaqbal.[5][6][7] In 2010, he was a featured speaker at the Bush Foundation Conference on CyberDissidents where he met with President Bush.[8]
On June 11, 2010, Keyes hosted a panel in the United States Congress. The briefing was held in the Committee on Foreign Affairs and addressed the issue of technology, Internet and access to independent media in Iran. Former Iranian deputy Prime Minister in Political Affairs, Mohsen Sazegara, and former senior director for Middle East Affairs in the National Security Council, Michael Singh joined the briefing. The panel was broadcast live on C-SPAN [3]. Following the briefing, Keyes said, "Few issues could be more important than supporting the Iranian people's right to free expression. We hope to galvanize Congress to put its immense resources behind those on the front line against theocratic dictatorship. Bloggers such as Omid Reza Mir Sayafi died in prison for nothing more than speaking their mind. The government of Iran jams broadcasts, filters the Internet, blocks Twitter and arrests dissidents. This crackdown is the ultimate proof of the regime's cruelty and insecurity."
CyberDissidents.org has also been active in Europe. On June 29 2010, Keyes spoke in the Italian Parliament where he briefed nearly 100 Iranian dissidents. His panel included Emma Bonino, Vice President of the Italian Senate, and Fiamma Nirenstein, Vice President of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and Harry von Bommel, Dutch Member of Parliament for the Socialist Party.[9]
CyberDissidents.org sparked international controversy following an op-ed authored by the organisation's director on February 16, 2010, in The Wall Street Journal criticizing Turkey’s ban on YouTube,[10] which launched a protest movement in Turkey. According to PBS, Keyes’ piece which was written from Istanbul, caused the Turkish newspaper Milliyet, together with other leading Turkish papers, to initiate a protest campaign to draw attention to the ban on Youtube.[11] Shortly after the publication of Keyes' article, Turkish president Abdullah Gul came out against the ban.[12]
Google has praised CyberDissidents.org for its innovative work. Keyes spoke at Google headquarters in Washington, DC where he advised over a dozen Arab dissidents, many of whom had been imprisoned for online activities. Shortly thereafter, speaking at the 2010 Geneva Human Rights Summit, the head of policy at Google, Bob Boorstin, pointed to CyberDissidents.org as a great organization on the cutting edge. He said “[W]hat should we do, what can we do together, in order to make ensure that the promise triumphs over the peril? The first thing that I would argue is: Don’t reinvent the wheel. The coolest stuff that I’ve seen out there is when a dissident or a blogger in one part of the world has his or her work picked up in another part of the world. There’s a lot of these tactics that can be transferred from place to place. I would also refer you to great organizations that already exist. I mentioned Global Voices, I would also mention the OpenNet Initiative, which is part of Harvard’s Berkman Society. I would mention CyberDissidents.org and DigiActive.org.”[13]
The organization has been featured in a wide array of press, including the Boston Globe,[14] the Wall Street Journal,[15][16] Voice of America and Alhurra television.
At the 2010 CyberDissidents conference at the George W. Bush Foundation in Dallas, Texas, a former United States ambassador to the European Union referred to CyberDissidents.org as “the leading organization in the world principally devoted to online democratic dissidents.” Keyes spoke on a panel there together with the Obama administration’s deputy assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Dan Baer.
In 2008 and 2009, CyberDissidents.org coordinated global protests at Egyptian embassies and university campuses in the United States, Canada and Israel in support of Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem Nabil Suleiman (also known as Kareem Amer), who was jailed in 2007 for criticizing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and “insulting Islam.”[17] CyberDissidents.org board member and former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky supported the protests, stating that “freedom of speech is an inalienable right. Suppressing that right contravenes human decency and makes a mockery of the democratic ideal.”[18]
CyberDissidents.org has a network of student ambassadors who have joined the organization to promote freedom of expression in the Middle East. In 2010, former senior director of the National Security Council, Mike Doran, chaired a CyberDissidents.org panel at NYU.
The group is heavily influenced by the philosophy of Soviet dissidents Andrei Sakharov and Natan Sharansky. Sharansky, who was imprisoned in a Soviet gulag for nine years, wrote: “In 1986, the Soviet dissident Anatoly Marchenko died in the infamous Chistopol prison after a long and futile hunger strike for improved conditions. Three years earlier, I had gone on a similar hunger strike in the same prison and been subjected to the same tortuous conditions by KGB thugs. But the authorities eventually gave in to my demands.
“Why? Because my nine years of imprisonment were accompanied by a relentless worldwide campaign and steady, unambiguous pressure on the communist regime by leaders of the free world. The regime knew that it would pay a heavy price if I were to die. With Marchenko, it was confident that the world did not care enough to do much more than mount a formal protest.” [19]
In June 2010, a group of Arab bloggers used Twitter to attack CyberDissidents.org because a few of its members are Israeli citizens. CyberDissidents.org board member and famed Egyptian dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim responded with a strongly worded statement in the organization’s newsletter: “A small group of activists in the Middle East have attacked CyberDissidents.org because some of its members are Israeli. I serve as an advisory board member to this marvelous organization and I am saddened by the attacks on it. CyberDissidents.org promotes freedom of expression in the Middle East, a cause which people of all faiths and nationalities should support. Alongside me on the board of advisers and staff are Sunnis, Shiites, Jews, Iranians, Jordanians, Syrians, Israelis, Sudanese, Canadians, Russians and Americans. If peace is to come to our troubled region, it will be through inclusion, tolerance and understanding, not disqualifying certain people because they happen to belong to a certain ethnic or religious group. I applaud CyberDissidents.org for its tireless advocacy of democratic dissidents.”[20] Ibrahim is the founder of the Arab Organization for Human Rights and a former visiting fellow at Harvard University. He spent seven years in prison in Egypt for his work promoting civil society and democracy.