How an online lynch mob left a Saudi writer facing a death sentence

From the green-clad tide of pro-democracy demonstrators who took to the streets of Tehran in 2009 to the ongoing demonstrations in Egypt, we’ve been led to believe that social media can be a force for good. Young people inciting others to action against repressive regimes through Twitter; witnesses putting videos on YouTube decrying state-sponsored violence; Facebook groups inviting protesters to gather at a square to chant for freedom. Yet in the case of Hamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old newspaper columnist from Saudi Arabia, the Internet has emerged as the source of repression.

Saudi Arabian authorities have charged Kashgari with blasphemy, apostasy and atheism for a series of tweets about the Islamic prophet Muhammad he posted on Feb. 4. On the prophet’s birthday, Kashgari wrote: "I love many things about you and hate others, and there are many things about you I don’t understand" /  "On your birthday, I shall not bow to you" / "I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more." (Translations from the WashingtonPost and the Christian Science Monitor.) Minutes after the posts went live, hundreds of angry tweeters were using a hashtag translated as "Hamza Kashgari the dog" urging authorities to punish him. (A hashtag is the "#" symbol used to identify topics on Twitter; dogs are considered unclean animals by many Muslims, so calling someone a "dog" is particularly offensive.)

Twitter anunció la semana pasada que comenzaría a restringir los tweets en países específicos si infringían las leyes locales, lo que suscitó acusaciones de censura por parte de los miembros de IFEX Reporteros sin Fronteras (RSF), el Centro de Bahrein por los Derechos Humanos (BCHR) y la Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (Organización Egipcia por los Derechos Humanos, EOHR). 

Antes, Twitter tenía que eliminar un tweet de toda su red se recibía una solicitud de retiro de un Gobierno. Pero la empresa dijo en una publicación en su blog el 26 de enero que ahora tenía la capacidad de bloquear selectivamente un tweet para que no apareciera para los usuarios de un país. 

"A partir de hoy, nos conferimos la capacidad de retener reactivamente contenido de los usuarios en un país específico aunque lo ponemos a disposición del resto del mundo", dijo el blog de Twitter.