Bahraini blogger and human rights activist Ali Abdulemam, founder of Bahrain Online, spoke about his experience resisting crackdowns from the conservative Bahraini regime with Charlie Lamson of Front Line Defenders and Phil Lavelle of Al Jazeera at the 'Tech in Conflict Zones' session on the first day of the web summit in Dublin.
Abdulemam created the Bahrain Online platform in 1998 to provide the tiny country of under 1.5 million people with pro-democracy news, but was arrested in 2005 under charges of insulting the king and broadcasting false news. He was arrested again in 2010 and tortured, and then forced to go into hiding for two years and avoided all contact with family and friends, because he had been sentenced to 15 years in jail by the military court.
While in hiding, using the internet was much more complicated for Abdulemam. He described how logging into his private email account included steps such as using his laptop after midnight, changing the address of the laptop, and using both a free VPN and a paid one.
“You’re the gold standard of security,” said Lamson of Front Line Defenders, an organisation that protects human rights defenders at risk. “A lot of human rights defenders are not thinking about digital security, so we find a lot of them thinking as they work: ‘I should think about how I’m storing data and sharing information’.”
Responding to Lavelle’s question on restrictive regimes possibly tolerating freer media if they behave with caution, Abdulemam said: “Regimes use allegations to prevent you from exercising your rights, but they are your rights – the UN says so – and how you exercise them is your choice. But regimes may say you can talk about this but not that.”
“For example, according to Bahrain’s constitution you cannot talk about the king, but in reality you cannot talk about anyone in the royal family, not even the kids. My thinking is that it’s my right (to do so), and I think the people of Bahrain are well educated to know how to use their rights and freedoms without harming others.”
