What is Global Voices Advocacy all about?
Sami Ben Gharbia: What Global Voices Advocacy actually does is cover the breakdown in online speech by documenting issues and censorship, like the arrest and harassment of bloggers or the colleagues who translate their articles. We identify digital activists already engaged in online free speech in their country. We try to support them in covering their country and we give them the technical means to continue with their work. Well, I think it’s a new kind of advocacy, it’s citizen advocates – they are active in the field, but they are also very active in supporting their fellow bloggers who are jailed in places like Egypt or Saudi Arabia. We see people who are defending bloggers and the main part of our writers are also bloggers. Most of the time they are the ones who alert the world about the arrest of bloggers, like the case in Saudi Arabia with Fouad Alfarhan, and the case of Kareem Amer in Egypt. So the advocacy section is an attempt to create a global anti-censorship network compo
