Sunday, June 11, 2017

More blocked websites in Egypt : Medium is blocked too "Updated"

Just as the Egyptian Parliament is on the verge of committing unforgivable sin by discussing the Tiran and Sanafir deal against the public opinion as well the court orders, we find that more websites are blocked including petition website and a whole popular publishing and blogging platform !!!
Medium blocked in Egypt
A screenshot for Medium homepage on TEData

On Friday , I have known that an online petition website against the Egyptian Saudi maritime borders demarcation deal was blocked.
Honestly, I am surprised because this website is not that popular and only 1480 people have signed the petition so far.

Updated on 12/6/2017

Just in less than 24 hours , we found out Al-Bediah news website and El-Badil news website are blocked.
Headed by veteran leftist journalist and activist Khaled El-Balshy, the left-leaning Pro-25 January new website is actually the most prominent defendant of the islands' Egyptian identity in the world of Egyptian press. The website used to publish every single shred of paper or document stating the islands are Egyptian.
El-Balshly who used to used to the head Egypt's Journalists syndicate's Freedom committee is a long time opposition figure in the press. He may go to jail if his appeal against the November's two years in jail and LE 10,000 Fine court sentence is rejected in the case that goes also back to Tiran and Sanafir.
El-Bedial , which ironically El-Balshy founded and then left in 2012 , joined the list of the blocked websites. Also, the Nasserite website was against the Saudi-Egyptian government deal.

I have just known Saturday evening that popular Medium publishing and blogging platform has been blocked in Egypt.
You can't get access to Medium.com and its blogs and sites whether on TEData DSL ISP or Orange 4G LTE as I have tired.
You can access it through VPN.

Aside from its current blogs publishing what the regime rejects of ,I read that some of news websites originally blocked in May was going to use Medium as alternative to reach to its readers in Egypt.On 24 May , not less than 23 websites were blocked in Egypt including independent Mada Masr news website as well Al-Jazeera TV network's websites.

In the following days , more websites have been blocked in the country till they reached over 40 50 websites  according to Cairo-based Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression "AFTE".
Following the first batch , we got new websites blocked everyday. Aside from Medium.com , Turkey-based SasaPost was also blocked in Egypt.


The close to Islamists SasaPost used to publish very interesting analytic reports about military involvement in economy and politics in Egypt from time to time.
It is really good website.
SasaPost is not the only the Turkey-based website to be blocked in Egypt in that recent campaign.
TurkPress , Akhbar Turkiya, Akhbar Al Aalm and Arab Turkey.

Iran-based websites have showed up in that list as the famous Al-Alam website is blocked now in Egypt.
Even Dubai-based Moheet News website was also blocked.
The Tor project website was also blocked in Egypt making it hard for the users to download and use it.

Updated on 12/6/2017

Cyberghost VPN, Hsslite VPN, Tiger VPN, Tunnel Bear VPN and Zen VPN have joined the list !!!!!!!

Nbad mobile phone news aggregator was blocked along with Doha-based Gulf Times.
In late May, we found out that Daily News Egypt "DNE" and El-Borsa Daily were both blocked. It is worth to mention that their publisher Mostafa Sakr's assets have been frozen by the Egyptian government over alleged Muslim Brotherhood ties in December 2016.
Sakr was already known to be designated as a terrorist since January. He was officially designated as a terrorist in the official Egyptian State's Gazette early June.

Another even more interesting fact , President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi wrote two op-eds about the Egyptian economy and investment opportunities in DNE exclusively during the Euromoney conference in Cairo.

Geneva-based Sinai human rights NGO's official website has been blocked and I think this can be the first time I have heard about that NGO as well the first time to visit its official website.
I write this blog post and I read that there are more websites per day are joining that block list.
It is getting more than ridiculous for real.

As the Six day war 50th anniversary passed last week , I do not remind the people that we live in 2017 and not in 1967.
I think one of the lessons that we should have remembered from horrible way is how the State-controlled media eventually harmed the state and the Egyptian army as people lost their confidence in the local media due to the constant lies.
It is not a big secret that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi admired the so-called "Nasser" media that supported him in his career. That"support" was not a free one but rather obligatorily.
That support was forced one as journalism in Egypt was nationalized losing its freedom of expression forever.
That "support" was actually a cheap propaganda that glorified the ruler of Egypt as if he were god who cannot be accountable for anyone.
I do not need to say that but it is getting ridiculous.
We are not the Gulf , We are Egypt and this is 2017 and not 1967.

6 comments:

  1. I was wondering why I can't access medium since I came back to Egypt, oh well..

    ReplyDelete
  2. Give a try to this tool to access medium articles in Egypt. It's as easy as pasting the medium article URL in the search box and reading the blocked content without using VPN or having to download a browser extension
    http://knowledgeofficer.com/medium

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dude, do you have any idea on which specific data the internet has been censored in Egypt?

    ReplyDelete
  4. also we can use this VPN chrome extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kpiecbcckbofpmkkkdibbllpinceiihk

    ReplyDelete

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