[Localization] Alaa Abd El Fattah - off-topic?

[Alexander Dupuy]

Chris Leonard wrote:

> It is with deep concern that I read about the recent and ongoing detention
> of Alaa Abd El Fattah (@alaa) by the Egyptian military authorities after
> his return to his homeland.
>   

I think that this is very much on-topic for localization.  I too have
never met Alaa, but was aware of his work with the Translate.org.za
people, both for Pootle and the Translate Toolkit in general.  In
particular, he is responsible for most of any recent work on the
terminology component of the Translate Toolkit that I originally
developed for the purpose of improving the OLPC Pootle terminology, and
which I hope to use to generate an updated and improved terminology set
for Sugar/OLPC.


I was not aware of Alaa's activism and other activities (or even that he
was Egyptian) but I am inspired by his actions, and proud that my work
on the terminology component may have contributed in some small way to
any of his efforts.


As worthless as online petitions generally are, there is one calling on
President Obama and the U.S. Congress to "call on Egypt’s Supreme
Council of the Armed Forces to immediately and unconditionally end
emergency law and stop the military trial and detention of civilians,
including Alaa Abd El Fattah." - https://www.accessnow.org/free-alaa -
and I hope all of you can at least make the effort to sign it - it takes
literally less than a minute.  If you have more time and/or resources,
you can send a letter and/or contact your own government representatives. 


One of the links that Chris posted
(http://aliquidnovi.org/egyptian-tech-entrepreneur-unlawfully-detained/)
has a letter to the ambassador of Egypt to South Africa, which I adapted
and am sending to the Egyptian ambassador to the US (you can see my
version in the comments).  In the US, the contact information is at
http://www.egyptembassy.net/contactus.cfm.  A more comprehensive
worldwide list of embassies can be found at
http://embassy.goabroad.com/embassies-of/egypt - note that the US e-mail
addresses listed at both sites appear to be non-functional - I would be
curious to hear if the same is true of the listed fax numbers.


Chris also called the Egyptian Defense office in Washington DC, and in
response to their comment that he needed to speak to the embassy, he
replied that "the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces was running things
in Egypt now and they were the ones imprisoning Alaa, as well as the
beneficiaries of the largest portion of [US] aid, so I was pretty sure
that they were the ones that needed to hear this message."


Alaa's wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaa_Abd_El-Fatah)
has more interesting history and even recent news links, like this one
from the NY Times:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/egyptians-rally-for-blogger-jailed-for-defying-military-prosecutor/


I encourage anyone on this list to contact Chris and/or myself if you
have other questions or suggestions on this issue.


@alex

-- 
mailto:alex.dupuy at mac.com