Laila el-Haddad is a Duke graduate and Gaza activist. She lives most of the time in Gaza but has returned to Duke on several occasions to talk about the Middle East. She was passing through Cairo’s airport today on way to another venue when suddenly she and her family members were detained.
el-Haddad immediately started Twittering her detention. If you have a Twitter account, you can follow her postings at @gazamom. For more than 12 hours she described the unreal procession of questionings, of waiting, of discussions with the other detainees. The most recent word she gives is authorities are denying her return to Gaza but will deport her to the U.S.
But not just a window into the detention, Twitter was also a means by which other activists could come to her assistance. Friends at Duke immediately got in touch; American and Egyptian authorities were pressed for more information. It seems unlikely that in this case she was saved from actual arrest, but Twitter has been credited in gaining releases in other cases.
Beyond the Twitter aspect, the detention also casts light on the hypocracy of many Arab governments’ support for Palestinian activists. The government’s support for Palestine often goes only as far as it serves their own purposes; when activists make the cause their own independently, it often — as it did in Laila’s case — brings the weight of the security forces on them.
More on Twitter: Activists in Moldova are attempting to see what a revolution would look like on Twitter. Click here for the story.
(Thursday update and More on Twitter: Today, Egyptian police broke into the house of blogger Wael Abbas. His reports are available on Twitter at @waelabbas.)