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Egypt arrests Morsi loyalists for inciting violence

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Cairo: The police in Egypt Friday arrested several supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi for participating in anti-government protests and inciting violence, a media report said.

In various cities of Beheira province, about 130 km north of the capital Cairo, the police arrested 15 pro-Morsi protesters for shouting anti-government slogans and raising posters of the deposed Islamist president, as per reported citing the official  news agency.

Three Morsi supporters were arrested on charges of inciting violence in the province.

In Alexandria city, northwest of Cairo, police arrested six protesters allegedly belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood group, from which Morsi hailed, after clashes between protesters and security personnel.

Also on Friday, six people were arrested in Upper Egypt’s Minya province over charges of breaking into and burning police stations and public properties following the security dispersal of pro-Morsi sit-ins last year.

In Suez, 120 km east of Cairo, two Brotherhood members were ordered 15-day detention over charges of planning vandalism and gun possession. The two were senior employees of a company that produces nitrate, a raw material for making explosives.

Some media reports quoted security sources as saying that the police arrested 20 Brotherhood loyalists in Fayoum, 85 km south of Cairo, in a murder case of a policeman.

Morsi was removed by the military in July 2013 after mass protests against his one-year rule. The Muslim Brotherhood has been blacklisted by the Egyptian new leadership as “a terrorist group” and its members have been banned by court order from running in presidential and parliamentary elections.

Hundreds of Morsi supporters have been handed lengthy jail terms and death sentences after speedy trials since Morsi’s overthrow. A massive security crackdown on his supporters has left about 1,000 dead and thousands others arrested.

Morsi himself is currently in custody for trials over the 2011 jailbreak, espionage, ordering the killing of protesters, insulting the judiciary and leaking classified documents to Qatar.

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Lockdowns in China Force Urban Communities to Defy Censorship and Vent Frustration Online

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Anyip Mobile Proxies

Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.

Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai

Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.

Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.

Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.

WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.

Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.

Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy

Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.

The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.

Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.

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