
Opensource contributor Bassel Khartabil detained in Syria. Needs help - BjornW
Bassel Bassel Khartabil - an open source software contributor to projects such as Creative Commons &#38; Mozilla has been unjustly detained for nearly four months without trial or any legal charges being brought against him.<p>Read more &#38; sign the support letter: 
http://freebassel.org/<p>ps: Help get this on the frontpage of HackerNews
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calbear81
I don't know Bassel but the fact that he's been detained secretly in Syria
suggests that the government thinks he's involved somehow with he
uprising/democracy movement.

I don't think signature campaigns will do any good since not even pressure
from the US and Turkey has slowed down the bloodshed so do we really think
they will care about a bunch of virtual signatures collected online?

There's a few more viable options that should be considered:

1) Leverage someone who has influence with the Syrian government to take up
the cause. Given Bassel has been an open source contributor, maybe look at
which tech companies are still contracted by the Syrian government and try to
get them to lend a voice of support. Make sure to play up the positive PR that
releasing Bassel will have on improving Syria's image.

2) Stop collecting signatures and start collecting money to work the back
channels. Let's be honest here, corruption is rife (high corruption index on
Transparency International study) and the situation pretty chaotic, if you
really want to free Bassel, consider a pragmatic approach.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
Or do what Amnesty International does, and send _polite_ but urgent letters of
concern to persons of authority and influence including ambassadors (UN, US
etc) and to Basher Assad himself. People are likely to be better treated if
the authorities know that they are the focus of international attention
(conversely it totally sucks for the thousands of anonymous people being
tortured today in Syrian jails).

~~~
tomjen3
Or cut the middle man and go directly to Amnesty. They might consider him for
their letter campaign (they already have the lists of recipients and have been
known to send so many letters that they can cover a jail cell).

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sandGorgon
Just a suggestion - why do you not work with Avaaz.org A lot of people (like
me) would be a little worried at sharing name and email addresses to an
unknown site(no offence).

In fact, it would have been better if you had linked to
<https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/33119> which vouches for
<http://freebassel.org/>

_Creative Commons supports efforts to obtain the release of Bassel Safadi, a
valuable contributor to and leader in the technology community. Bassel’s
expertise and focus across all aspects of his work has been in support of the
development of publicly available, free, open source computer software code
and technology. He pursues this not only through his valuable volunteer
efforts in support of Creative Commons, but in all of his work in the
technology field. Through his efforts, the quality and availability of freely
available and open technology is improved and technology is advanced._

~~~
zalew
Does Avaaz have any success stories? By success I mean freeing a dissident or
sth. All their 'successes' I read of is 'raised appeal', 'collected xxxxxx
signatures', blah blah, even the ones that actually resulted in some action
are a bit controversial when it comes to counting _their_ role in the whole
process (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avaaz>) and look more like correlation
than causation. They even credit themselves for Libya, ridiculous. I
subscribed some time ago to their newsletter, the ammount of campaigns 'sign
here, click there' made me impossible to believe they actually do anything
besides being loud. Clicktivism.

~~~
sandGorgon
Possibly (however, there's a lot of partially verified activism in Syria
quoted here <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avaaz#2012>). However, some aspects
of them evokes a bit of trust:
[https://secure.avaaz.org/en/avaaz_expenses_and_financial_inf...](https://secure.avaaz.org/en/avaaz_expenses_and_financial_information/)

The question is - how is having a custom website any different ? From an end
user (me) point of view, I trust Avaaz as a platform to _reasonably_ not mess
with my data.

~~~
zalew
It isn't any different. It's still a few thousand first-world armchair
warriors thinking their click matters. I'm sorry for this guy no less and no
more than any other Syrian, but I can't believe anybody who knows who Assad is
is fool enough to think they will touch his emotions with an email. It's not a
damn breast cancer avatar ribbon, stop acta or save the whales, he got
arrested by a regime making massacres on it's own citizens. I'm sorry to burst
somebody's bubble of trust in the power of internet, but sadly guys like him
will be very lucky to get out in one piece, and even if he does, there's very
little to celebrate as thousands like him are there, without a hacker
community support. Still good that you are worried about your email, let's
choose a good platform, follow me on twitter and change the world with a click
so we can sleep well.

~~~
BjornW
You are correct that just clicking links and tweeting about issues such as the
detainment of Bassel might not be very useful, regardless on which website
this happens. I've felt like this many times before. Yet doing nothing will
most definitely have no effect positive whatsoever. Therefor we try to do
something, maybe it is utterly futile and maybe not, but at least we've tried
to help a fellow human being getting out of a dire situation.

Personally I hope getting signatures will send a signal to other entities
(perhaps more powerful) that helping out with this cause might be beneficial
for them. Just because so many people, strangers and friends a like care.
Signatures might be useful to fuel other channels like calbear81 is
suggesting.

The worst thing in my opinion would be just forgetting people like Bassel and
many others in countries with oppressive regimes.

~~~
zalew
Slacktivism is in fashion because it's just too easy, and it encourages even
more of this behavior. One campaign justifies another one, although none of
them accomplished anything significant. People justify it like you did, and
they _feel_ they are doing something. Are they? Better be honest with
ourselves that we can't do crap, but it's a hard truth to endure.

Let's assume for a moment that one campaign to free someone in such situation
would be successful. One person. From hundreds/thousands in one country.
Probably tens of thousands throughout all oppresive countries. What would be
the result? I'll tell you: the interwebs would proclaim it's own great
success, that's a small leap but a giant step, blah blah. And happily in their
chairs keep clicking, feeling like a hero while per every petition there is a
thousand people keep being locked up and tortured and/or killed... Instead of
exploring new ideas to act and engaging in more 'on the ground' action to help
opressed people (probably the least but something practical you can do from
home is keeping Tor running[1]), the web keeps signing up petitions. Taking
part in such slacker campaigns is IMO a lose-lose situation, sorry.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwMr8Xl7JMQ&feature=relm...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwMr8Xl7JMQ&feature=relmfu)

btw Tor worked with Avaaz on collecting donations for communication devices,
yet: 1) it was a Tor initiative. 2)
<https://secure.avaaz.org/en/egypt_blackout/> "$25,197 raised so far. Help us
get to $100,000". From the frontpage "14,921,795 members worldwide" with a
minimum ammount of $15 it gives only about 1700 members who wanted to pay
anything (and I can only guess that this number is much lower and there were
bigger donations from single entities).

~~~
BjornW
Thanks for sharing your opinion, I've been saying the same things as you've
said, except it won't help one bit.

Personally I've decided it's better to strive towards helping out with both
new methods like your suggested Tor nodes and 'old methods' like petitions,
than doing nothing at all. Only the latter will definitely preserve a status-
quo and change nothing. Not for 1 person nor a thousand.

------
rejon
Please sign the letter and help the cause. We have more news to release as
well in the coming days!

------
derrida
I wish him freedom, and I wish his good friends courage in this fight. Best of
luck.

------
ommunist
There is war down there in Syria. When all covert ops yankees and poms will go
home, the war will stop. And people of Bassel sort will be free again. Right
now I only see this campaign as promotion of anti-Assad moods in digital
communities. Dirty game. You better campaign for 'Yankee go home from Syria',
before starting anything like that. See this one 4 hrs ago -
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/03/military...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/03/military-
intervention-syria-disastrous-people)

------
yhud
you are speaking about "legal charge" and about a country like Syria at the
same time ... How naive are you?

~~~
rejon
Very naive, but he is our best friend, so what would you do for your best
friend?

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yhud
unjustly how?

~~~
BjornW
Please refrain yourself from making comments that can be read as plain
trolling. Feel free to ask questions or comment with arguments instead of
these oneliners.

~~~
MaleKitten
"ps: Help get this on the frontpage of HackerNews"

Actually, I think you bear the burden of proof here by asking to get this to
the front page. Asking for evidence and reasoning is hardly trolling.

~~~
BjornW
I was referring to yhud previous comment on being naive. Asking questions such
as yours is indeed not trolling and apologize for the confusion.

As for your question there is as far as we know little news coming from Syria
and rejon who is commenting here as well is on the case to get more info.

~~~
derrida
MaleKitten, yhud said both "you are speaking about 'legal charge' and about a
country like Syria at the same time ... How naive are you?" and "unjustly
how?".

