Revolution 2.0. Wael Ghonim
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Revolution 2.0 - Wael Ghonim страница 15
Название: Revolution 2.0
Автор: Wael Ghonim
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9780007454389
isbn:
I presented the concept of Google Moderator to Ali ElBaradei and explained what it could mean for the campaign. Using this service to hold an event would reach a vast number of Internet users, the majority of whom would be young people whom the NDP had never communicated with in any genuine way. Dr. ElBaradei welcomed the idea and said he was ready to implement it as soon as he came back from a trip abroad.
The initiative was announced on his Facebook page in mid-May 2010. It was called “Ask ElBaradei.” The number of fans on the page had now reached 150,000, of whom more than 2,700 participated. They posted 1,300 questions that received about 60,000 votes. It was an astonishing outpouring. Ironically and in contrast, Gamal Mubarak’s team had initiated an Internet dialogue shortly before this and asked interested people to send their questions before attending the event. Of course, it was all scripted in advance and the questions were carefully selected.
I wondered what would happen if President Mubarak were to receive questions from Internet users. Would his aides be able to accept clear and direct questions without the usual politicking and deception? The answer was obvious.
The questions for Dr. ElBaradei were profound. Many of the questions that received the highest number of votes revealed anxiety about the follow-up to the signature-collecting campaign. The most important questions were: How will the signatures collected be useful? What is Plan B, if the regime refuses nonviolent change after we collect a large number of signatures? How can we reach rural parts of Egypt to spread awareness about change? Will you take Egypt toward secular governance? What is your position on the second article of the constitution, which states clearly that the Islamic Sharia is the nation’s main source of legislation? What are the priorities of your presidential agenda? Finally, Do you eat kushari? (Kushari, made of rice, lentils, and pasta, is a very affordable and popular daily meal for many Egyptians.) It was clear that many people simply needed reassurance that ElBaradei was “one of us.”
Together with other coordinators of ElBaradei’s campaign, we filtered the questions and began searching for an interviewer who would address these questions to Dr. ElBaradei. Our search was not easy. Everyone we asked refused to play this role; some attributed it to personal reasons or prior commitments, and others said they were afraid of the consequences. In the end, we decided that the campaign’s own Mostafa al-Nagar should be the interviewer. The interview was viewed by more than 100,000 online users.
Dr. ElBaradei tried to remain optimistic in his responses. Instead of appearing frustrated at the limited number of signatures and blaming people’s passive attitudes, he spoke about proactivity and the importance of joining forces for the sake of Egypt’s future. The man was inspiring in his presentation of a better tomorrow. The regime cannot resist the people’s demands for long, he said.
Dr. ElBaradei was blessed with optimism. Every time things seemed dark, he beamed with hope and asserted that change was coming. One famous opposition journalist, known for his sarcasm, commented, “He must know something that we do not.” And it turned out that he obviously did.
ElBaradei had it right all along: we did not need a savior; we had to do this ourselves.
3
“Kullena Khaled Said”
ON JUNE 8, 2010, while browsing on Facebook, I saw a shocking image that a friend of mine had posted on my wall. The picture linked to the official Facebook account of Dr. Ayman Nour, the former presidential candidate who was a political activist. It was a horrifying photo showing the distorted face of a man in his twenties. There was a big pool of blood behind his head, which rested on a chunk of marble. His face was extremely disfigured and bloodied; his lower lip had been ripped in half, and his jaw was seemingly dislocated. His front teeth appeared to be missing, and it looked as if they had been beaten right out of his mouth. The image was so gruesome that I wondered if he had been wounded in war. But by accessing Dr. Nour’s page I learned that Khaled Mohamed Said had apparently been beaten to death on June 6 by two secret police officers in Alexandria.
My first reaction was denial. I could not believe that anyone could actually inflict such brutality on someone else. The victim was a twenty-eight-year-old from Alexandria. According to eyewitnesses, some dispute had erupted between him and the two officers, leading to their physical assault on him, which claimed the young man’s life.
I felt miserable, frustrated, and outraged. This was all the result of a political situation that rendered security forces loyal servants of an oppressive regime. Some of our law enforcement personnel had mutated into vicious monsters who were immune from punishment and prone to committing atrocities. They abandoned the Egyptian ethic of goodness that has pervaded our society for centuries.
My memory of that day is vivid. I was sitting in my small study in Dubai, unable to control the tears flowing from my eyes. My wife came in to see what was wrong. When I showed her Khaled Said’s picture, she was taken aback and asked me to stop looking at it. She left the room, and I continued to cry over the state of our nation and the widespread tyranny. For me, Khaled Said’s image offered a terrible symbol of Egypt’s condition.
I could not stand by passively in the face of such grave injustice. I decided to employ all my skills and experience to demand justice for Khaled Said and to help expose his story to vigorous public debate. It was time to lay bare the corrupt practices of the Ministry of Interior, our repressive regime’s evil right hand.
The logical first idea was to publish news of Khaled Said’s murder on Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei’s Facebook page, whose members exceeded 150,000 at that time, but I reasoned that doing so would exploit an event of national concern for political gain. I discovered that a page had been launched under the title “My Name Is Khaled Mohamed Said.” I browsed among the posts on that page. It was evident that the contributors were political activists. Their discourse was confrontational, beginning with the page’s headline: “Khaled’s murder will not go unpunished, you dogs of the regime.” From experience I knew that such language would not help in making the cause a mainstream one.
I decided to create another page and to use all my marketing experience in spreading it. Out of the many options I considered for the page’s name, “Kullena Khaled Said” — “We Are All Khaled Said” — was the best. It expressed my feelings perfectly. Khaled Said was a young man just like me, and what happened to him could have happened to me. All young Egyptians had long been oppressed, enjoying no rights in our own homeland. The page name was short and catchy, and it expressed the compassion that people immediately felt when they saw Khaled Said’s picture. I deliberately concealed my identity, and took on the role of anonymous administrator for the page.
The first thing I posted on the page was direct and blunt. It voiced the outrage and sadness that I felt.
Today they killed Khaled. If I don’t act for his sake, tomorrow they will kill me.
In two minutes’ time three hundred members had joined the page:
People, we became 300 in two minutes. We want to be 100,000. We must unite against our oppressor