What can you do to help?

I receive emails every now and then from Egyptians (and non-Egyptians) abroad who’ve been following with disgust the actions of Mubarak’s police against the citizens, and ask me what they can do to help.

Here are few basic things you can do:

1) Stay updated. Familiarize yourself with the social struggle in the country and Mubarak’s police abuses by regularly checking the following websites:
Torture in Egypt
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (available in both Arabic and English)
Egyptian Blogs Aggregator
Human Rights Watch Egypt (available in both Arabic and English)
Amnesty International Egypt (available in both Arabic and English)

2) Circulate any information you come across about police abuses and the resistance against them to your network of contacts, activists, peers and family members

3) Whenever you hear or read of a torture case that happened in Egypt, try to get solidarity statements with the victims from the institutions you are affiliated with (for example: labor union, student union, community association, human rights organization, political party, etc). Forward the solidarity statement you managed to get to the following:
a) The Egyptian dictator asshole President Hosni Mubarak
b) The Egyptian Ministry of Torture and Pigs Interior
c) The Egyptian embassy or consulate in your town

4) It is always GREAT if you can pull together a protest, no matter how small (even one person with a banner!), in front of the Egyptian embassy or any of the consulates in your own country. Make sure you contact your local press and tell them in advance you are demonstrating, and invite them to attend the protest (even if small). And it would be also useful to take photos yourself of the protest, and upload them to Flickr, your own blog, or just send them to me or any other Egyptian blogger to circulate among the activist and journalist community in Egypt.

These are, as I said above, just few basic things you can do. More later…