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Xedited outX FORCES GAYEGYPT.COM OFF THE NET STILL AWAITING NEWS OF RETRIAL Posted 28 January 2003 For two days our website was closed down and it only survived by a miracle. MYSTERY OF BANK'S REFUSALS. Over the last three months the xxxeditedoutxxx bank had been refusing payments to our hosting company. The monthly payment was only £18 ! But we still had over £4500 on the account. Enough money to cover these direct debits for another twenty years ! According to the hosting company xxxeditedoutxxx declared there was insufficient funds to cover expenses. But they didn't refuse any other payment for other personal expenses made with the card. And some of these payments were larger. There was even a series of direct debit payments to another company made over the internet but they were accepted without problem. No letter or phone call was ever received from XXXX prior to the website's suspension regarding the fact that payments had been refused month after month. According to the hosting company the first refusal was made by XXXX on 22 November, the next in December and then again in January. But we had no idea we were living on borrowed time. XXXX, it seems, didn't want to tell us. I should add that XXXX didn't tell GayEgypt.com's sponsor they gave insufficient funds as a reason for refusing payments. The first reason they gave was that the outgoing payments didn't fit the account's profile of previous expenditure even though the monthly direct debits had been outgoing for almost three years on a regular basis. Then they said that the details submitted may have been incorrect but when we checked with the hosting company all the details they had were perfectly correct. For two days the host company took the site off the net and as it was a weekend in America where the host company is based we had no knowledge of whether all the pages had been lost or not. Fortunately for us the hosting company were able to retrieve them late on Monday. May be it's being a little paranoid but we couldn't help but note that XXX seems to have a considerable presence in Egypt. But there couldn't be any link between this fact and our experience. Surely it was merely incompetence. Wasn't it ? Anyway, we're back and we're desperately searching news about the "Queen Boat" retrial. Can anyone email us any information they have to info@GayEgypt.com. Another of the strange coincidences was that our site disappeared on the proposed first day of the retrial - Saturday 25 January. So we lost all emails and communication from then until today - Tuesday 28 January. FEAR PERVADES CAIRO'S GAY COMMUNITY SIGNS ALSO OF A SIMILAR CLAMPDOWN IN SYRIA. EXTREMISTS ISSUE FINAL DEATH THREAT WARNING TO GAYEGYPT.COM EDITORS. Posted Thursday 23 January Emails continue to arrive at GayEgypt.com evidencing a quiet but resolute clampdown by Egyptian police on Cairo's gay community. Mostly the stories concern entrapment operations via internet chat rooms but doubtless the authorities are also raiding bars and known cruising areas. The consensus seems to be that this time the government, fearing international reaction, has pressured the police and the press into a conspiracy of silence. Today we received an email which is typical of several received recently "Please post a warning on your site for people to beware of a guy pretending to be a [ foreign nationality - details deleted ] guy living in Cairo named [deleted]... He has a gaydar profile [deleted] and is meeting guys there, chatting with them on MSN for a while, then arranging to meet them and then BAM they get arrested. This has happened to 5 people I know personally, one of whom is my boyfriend. This guy does not show up and does not get arrested. It is coming to light that he is probably not a cop, and therefore is an informer setting up dates to get people arrested." Unfortunately we are unable to give actual names anyone is using on the net for legal reasons. Another Cairo correspondent advises "The arrests and the internet related ones specially are actually on the rise..... last week I met a guy "XYZ" who has been arrested with his friend by that internet gay police ! Both are upper mid class, educated people who come from well off known families." Meanwhile in the last few weeks half of all our advertisers in our Syria Arab Gay Personals section have sent in requests for us to take their personal adverts down. We have repeatedly sent emails to them asking them if they have been under any pressure to withdraw their personal ads but haven't received replies from anyone. At the same time extremists have issued death threats against GayEgypt.com. The latest was received last Friday 17 January with the subject heading "You are dead you faggots." "..........This is a final warning and you WILL get your faggot shit out of the net or i will know how to handle you..........and wait till i tell the others about your rubbish... .....Count your days and you will pay for your homo trash......... I will catch you eventually just a matter of time you pussy." It is only one of several issued in the last month. Against this bleak outlook, the retrial of those arrested in the so-called "Queen Boat Raid" of May 2001 is due to start this Saturday 25 January. POLICE CONTINUE CLAMPDOWN ON GAYS USING THE INTERNET. Posted Friday 10 January On Thursday ( 9 January ) Egyptian police announced that they had arrested a thirty year old man who worked at one of Cairo's top hotels after he had been entrapped on the internet through a chat site. He had posted his pictures on a website under the title "Single Dreamer." Less than three weeks earlier, 0n 22 December, a dentist had been arrested in an almost identical entrapment operation. As we wrote last month [ see Gay News December 2002 ] the trial of the so-called Queen Boat defendants (not all of them were arrested on the boat) has been postponed until 25 January. Below we post the AFP report on which this news item is based - CAIRO — Egyptian police arrested a 30-year-old gay man after chatting with him on an Internet website he had set-up to seek potential partners and luring him to meet them, police said Thursday. The man, whose name was not given, was an employee at a luxurious Cairo hotel and had posted pictures of himself on the website entitled "single dreamer". On the website, he invited anyone interested to contact him and meet with him. Police, in an undercover operation, chatted with the man over the Internet passing themselves off as a potential gay lover and arranged to meet with him. At the meeting place, they arrested him. On December 22, a gay dentist who had created a similar website was arrested in the same manner. Homosexuality is not explicitly prohibited under Egyptian law which is based on sharia or Islamic law, although numerous statutes condemn conduct deemed to be an affront to public morality. On January 25, 50 Egyptians rounded up in May 2001 at an evening boat party on the Nile and accused of gay sex will appear for another hearing in their re-trial. Nearly half of them were sentenced to jail in November 2001, but in May President Hosni Mubarak ordered their retrial saying the case did not fall under the jurisdiction of the state security court. Western gay rights groups and human rights organizations have protested against the treatment of homosexuals in Egypt. You can also compare with the French version - Egypte : encore un gay arrêté pour avoir créé un site Web par la rédaction Vendredi 10 janvier 2003 La police égyptienne a une nouvelle fois arrêté un homosexuel qui avait créé un site Internet afin de rencontrer d'autres gays. Agé de 30 ans, l'homme travaillait dans un hôtel de luxe du Caire, avait mis sur son site Internet, baptisé "Single dreamer" des photos de lui, et incitaient les internautes intéressés à le contacter. Il a été arrêté en allant à un rendez-vous avec un visiteur de son site Web, qui était en réalité un policier. La police lui a donc délibérément tendu un piège en se faisant passer pour un partenaire potentiel. L'an dernier, plusieurs gays avaient déjà été arrêtés en Egypte pour avoir utilisé Internet comme moyen de rencontre d'autres hommes. Au début de l'année, plusieurs avaient été condamnés à des peines de prison, et fin décembre, un jeune dentiste, qui avait lui aussi créé un site Web, avait également été arrêté. Après l'affaire très médiatisée des 50 Egyptiens du Queen Boat (dont le procès reprend le 25 janvier), la police égyptienne continue donc, mois après mois, à harceler les gays et à les arrêter, quitte à leur tendre de véritables traquenards pour les débusquer. |
