Twitter under fire after suspending Egyptian journalist Wael Abbas
- The Guardian
Twitter has faced criticism after the account of a prominent Egyptian journalist and campaigner was suspended for reasons that were not specified. Notable figures backing the restoration of his account include Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion and chairman of the Human Rights Foundation. the suspension, saying it involved the deletion of “over 250,000 tweets. Dozens of thousands of pictures, videos and live streams from the middle of every crisis in Egypt with date stamp on them, reporting on people who got tortured, killed or missing. Live coverage of events as they happened in the street.”
- Sherif Azer described Abbas’s account as “a live archive to the events of the revolution and till today one of few accounts still documenting human rights abuses in Egypt”.
- The newspaper Al-Ahram reported that Abbas had been suspended from Twitter for the “intention to incite violence”, to which Abbas replied on Facebook: “The biggest official newspaper in Egypt is happy my Twitter is suspended. This tells much doesn’t it? Need I say anything now?”
This shows that there is a lack of freedom of speech and that people who are in power are in control. The suspension of the account can be seen as a careless attempt to shut down those who are challenging these Marxist views. However, this has enraged the public and caused Twitter to receive immense backlash. The fact that the biggest official newspaper in Egypt is happy that his account is blocked could suggest a link between the two.
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