"EIGHTY PER CENT OF ARAB WORLD INTERNET TRAFFIC IS GOING TO SEX SITES" - A STUDY CLAIMS. [ Posted 26 April ] The following article appeared two days ago on wired.com - 1001 Arabian Nights of Sex By Steve Kettmann 2:00 a.m. April 24, 2001 PDT ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates -- It's all about sex. That, at least, was the surprise conclusion that came bursting out of a panel discussion Monday on what people in the Arab world are looking for when they go to the Internet. In other words, they are like Web surfers everywhere else in the world. Ramzi El Khoury, the founder of an Arabic-language Internet portal, kicked up the temperature on the discussion during the second International Summit on Internet and Multimedia when he cited a study that found that 80 percent of Arab-world Internet traffic heads for sex sites. "I disagree with Ramzi when he says that 80 percent of the traffic goes to sex sites," said Khaldoon Tabaza, co-founder of Arabia Online in Amman, Jordan. But El Khoury, who also lives in Amman, stuck to his guns, and elaborated on the point after the Arabic panel discussion. The cultural controls imposed on people living in the Arab world make them hungrier to explore the world of dot-com sexual thrills, he said. "Of course there is a much bigger need in the Arab world because of the sexual suppression," he said. "If it's illegal, then people want it. It's not because they are oversexed, or their sexual needs are more than other people. But if you make something illegal, especially something as natural as sex, then it becomes more in demand." "Certain countries have very strict cultural and government regulation regarding the subject of sex. In Jordan, for example, you can have a girlfriend and have sex before marriage. But not in a lot of the other countries." The United Arab Emirates, like many other countries in the Arab world, block users from accessing such content -- or at least try. For example, if a visitor at the Abu Dhabi Hilton types in www.playboy.com, he encounters a stop sign. A message pops up on the screen announcing that the site in question is on the "Emirates Internet Control List." The screen shows what looks like a large diamond-shaped stop sign reading, "Blocked site," flashing in English and Arabic. "Emirates Internet denies access to this site," the page reads. "For more information on Emirates Internet services, click here." El Khoury and others who favor political and cultural liberalization in the Arab world see the lure of the sex sites as a good thing. It gets people thinking about the larger world out there. "We have to ask ourselves: Should government be allowed to censor the Internet?" he said. "Here in the United Arab Emirates and in Saudi Arabia and in Syria, there are government-controlled proxies that block traffic and filter it. So you cannot go to certain sites. "Some proxies are advanced and powerful enough to block your searches. But no proxy is perfect. So people living in these countries become amateur hackers. They teach each other ways to reach certain sites." And it's not like they are ever lacking in motivation, either. More importantly, El Khoury and others believe there are important social trends at work here. Sex is both graphic reality and metaphor for the possibilities out there, including something as taken for granted in the United States as news of the world. "Knowledge is not owned by anybody," said Anas Haddad, content manager of Saudia Arabia-based Naseej.com, during the panel discussion. "The Arab person in general looks for curiosity and entertainment on the Internet." Haddad was arguing the point that some government control of content is not necessarily a bad thing. But ongoing trends are likely to lend growing weight to the argument against this position. According to Wissam El Solh, CEO of Netakeoff in Beirut, Lebanon, Internet penetration among the 280 million people in the Arab world will increase from 2 million users last year to 3.5 million this year to more than 30 million in 2005. Some of that traffic will be devoted to such mundane matters as e-commerce for basic household necessities. Haddad was arguing for that as a major advance. But not everyone agreed. "I do not agree that you have to help the housewife to get a bar of soap or whatever she wants," said Hosam El Sokkari, head of BBCArabic, which provides original Arabic-language news reporting on its site. News like that from the outside world -- El Sokkari works in London -- changes the way people in the Arab world have access to information, not just directly, but indirectly. Arabic papers are gaining more freedom, bit by bit. "Because a piece of news appears on the Internet, the newspaper is able to say, 'I am not publishing this news, I am not breaking this story, I am only republishing it,'" El Khoury said. "To censors, this is an important distinction. "The governments have not changed in the Middle East. But they are forced to deal with a new reality. They need the Internet. They need IT. They have a choice: Either they are going to become backward, or they are going to liberalize. They are either going to allow their people to use the new technology that other people are using, or they are going to destroy their countries. What choice do they have? "People like me see the Internet as an opportunity to work toward real, democratic government. It is a force too powerful for any government to stop, unless they want to harm their own people. And in the Arab world, governments are patriarchal. They do not want to harm their own people. So it is just a matter of time." DAMANHOUR FOUR FOUND NOT GUILTY FIRST SIGNAL OF GOVERNMENT CLIMBDOWN ? BUT HUNDREDS OF GAY MEN REMAIN IN PRISON. [ Posted 14 April ] Hopes were raised yesterday, 13 April, when an appeals court found the four Damanhour defendants previously sentenced to three years each not guilty of the gay "crimes" for which the lower court had convicted them. This news taken together with the more than two month period since the last publicized arrests has raised hopes that the Egyptian Government might finally be recognizing the international pressure prevoked by its gay witch-hunt. However hundreds of gay men remain in prison and there are also well founded fears that the Government may be instructing police to continue or even intensify the clampdown but without allowing media coverage. But make no mistake in thinking this is just a rare example of justice by a "good" court. The decision to release the "Damanhour Four" comes right from the top, from Mubarak. It follows closely the visit of Colin Powell to Cairo and comes weeks after the Egyptian president was made to feel very uncomfortable at an Elysee State dinner in Paris when his host Jaques Chirac publicly critized Mubarak's government over the recent gay purge. Egyptians have also been annoyed that while the police are happy to snoop on and raid private homes in search of "gay crimminals", nothing is being done to tackle the very real crimes of violence and hooliganism which effect everyday life in most communities. Recently one Egyptian living in Florida wrote angrily to Al Ahram Weekly after a brief holiday visit to his home town - Damanhour ! "The city is extremely dirty, hooliganism is rife on its streets; I saw street fights where people were badly injured or killed, while the police remained conspicuously absent. When I asked why the police were not being called, people would answer that they already knew what was happening and did not care." But, primarily, it is international pressure which has led to the release of the "Damanhour Four" and it is continued international pressure which can help many more Egyptian gay men, atleast several hundred, who remain in prison. Let's keep it going. We have reproduced below the press release from the Internationanl Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Committee in San Francisco. To visit their web site please click on iglhrc.org Press Release - International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission Egypt: "Damanhour Five" Not Guilty! IGLHRC Calls For Continued Pressure For Immediate Release: April 13, 2002 SAN FRANCISCO - Today an Egyptian appeals court in Damanhour, the capital of Al-Beheira province, found the "Damanhour Five" not-guilty of all charges. The five men had been convicted March 11 of consensual homosexual conduct, and had been sentenced to three years' imprisonment and three years' probation. "We are gratified that the Egyptian government is beginning to recognize its human rights obligations," stated Scott Long, Program Director at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC). "Unfortunately an unknown number of innocent people remain in prison because of their suspected homosexuality. We must continue the pressure until they are all released." The Damanhour trials come after a year in which brutal arrests, allegations of torture, and hard labor sentences and sensationalized trials of suspected homosexuals have become a regular occurrence in Egypt. The Damanhour defendants themselves have not been released yet. The five have been in jail since their arrest on January 15, 2002. They were convicted March 11 of the "habitual practice of debauchery" [al-fujur] under Article 9(c) of Law 10/1961--a provision commonly used in Egypt to penalize consensual homosexual behavior. The same law was used to sentence 23 men to one to five years of hard labor on November 14 of last year, in the notorious Queen Boat case. All five men had confessed to homosexual acts under what they later claimed was torture, including beatings and electric shocks. The prosecutor alleged that they had been found "used"--passive partners in homosexual sex--by a medical examination. For background information on Damanhour case, see IGLHRC Press Release March 11, 2002 New Prison Sentences for Alleged Homosexuals in Egypt: "Damanhour Five" Convicted Today http://www.iglhrc.org/news/press/pr_020311.html IGLHRC Action Alert March 7, 2002 New Stories Of Torture And Brutality: "Damanhour Five" Tell of Beatings And Electroshock While Mubarak Visits U.S. http://www.iglhrc.org/world/africa/Egypt2002Mar_2.html For detailed information on all known cases of persecution of homosexuals, see http://www.iglhrc.org/news/press/pr_020212.html For additional background information, see http://www.iglhrc.org/world/africa/#Egypt The mission of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) is to secure the full enjoyment of the human rights of all people and communities subject to discrimination or abuse on the basis of sexual orientation or expression, gender identity or expression, and/or HIV status. A US-based non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO), IGLHRC effects this mission through advocacy, documentation, coalition building, public education, and technical assistance. ### International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission 1360 Mission Street, Suite 200 o San Francisco, CA 94103 USA T: 1.415.255.8680 F: 1.415.255.8662 E: iglhrc@iglhrc.org http://www.iglhrc.org ### |