The Power of Blogging: Free Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja

Today, over a year after I first started started writing here, I made the mind-blowing discovery that I can track information and statistics about who views this blog. (Me? Technologically slow on the uptake? Behind the times? What??). Alas, Google doesn't so freely share the frightening mountains of information it hoards about all of us to tell me the names or IP addresses of you folks (damn protection of anonymity eh?) but it does provide the number of views per country, and the websites which have been used to find me.

All of you dear readers, I had no idea that you were out there. I am overwhelmed! It turns out that far more people are reading this than I ever imagined. I always presumed that the only people who found this page were friends or acquaintances who I had mentioned it to or who had picked it up on Facebook or the likes. But it's not so; the numbers don't add up. There really are people out there in the great beyond who find me, and who might even be a smidgen interested and read a little bit.

Who would have known, for instance, that somebody or some bodies in South Korea have looked at my page 44 times? Or that there are a hell of a lot of people in Russia interested in this? A Russian search engine is, in fact, the primary sites which refers people here after Google. I don't know anyone in Denmark, or France, or Germany who might be the people reading this there. More people in the US read this than in Ireland, so dear family and friends back home - you're outnumbered. I am shocked!

So to all of you, whoever you are, thank you for making my day, and thank you for reading. I hope you stay and look around a little while as we bump into each other in cyberspace and pass like ships in the night-time blogosphere. I hope you even find it a little interesting. But most of all, I hope you start commenting because I'd love to hear more from whoever is reading this!

Particularly because the most interesting finding of all provided by these new-fangled statistics was that the post with the second-highest numbers of viewings is that in which I wrote about the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and the (then) ongoing detention of Ali Abdulemam (the most-viewed page consisted of very pretty safari photos from Africa). In other words, people have been reading the posts in which I tried to raise awareness and attention about serious problems or issues I cared about. Of course I know how search engines work and how strategically-titled key words can pop up when requested. But I just never had concrete evidence before that it ever actually worked. And it's encouraging.

Which makes it interesting that I came across these statistics today, because all week I have been somewhat torn as to whether I should post about the beating and arrest of my former colleague at Front Line, Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja. A well-established human rights activist in Bahrain, Abdulhadi resigned recently from Front Line to focus his work on the ongoing protest movement in the country. Last week the police raided his daughter's house where he was staying, beat him unconscious, assaulted several other family members, and arrested him along with two of his sons-in-law. Since then his place of detention is unknown, he has had no contact with a lawyer and has reportedly been deprived access to medication for an ongoing health condition.

My first instinct was to write about this here. I worked with Abdulhadi on a daily basis during my time with Front Line and although he was usually based in Manama he visited Dublin several times during the year I worked there. I saw him most recently last autumn. He is an utter gentleman and, as I heard one friend describe him during the week, "a kind and gentle soul". And now he is at high risk of torture, in a country where increasing numbers of peaceful protesters have been been dying in detention.

So of course my first instinct was to write about it because this needs ATTENTION. Immediately. But, I thought, I feel like I lecture everyone about this stuff all the time. I bang on and on about human rights and arrests and injustice and people who are handed a rough lot in life. The friends and family who (I thought) read this blog are no doubt bored to death of my lecturing them on "the issues". Oh how very middle-class and well-educated and liberal of me. Yes, of course we all should do something about it, but don't people get tired of hearing about these things that are terrible but that they can't really do anything about?

Well, two things have struck home with me today. The first is that the response of Abdulhadi's daughter, Zainab Al-Khawaja, to the arrest of her father and husband puts me to shame. After seeing her father beaten unconscious in front of her in her home and having her husband dragged off to an unknown prison, she publicized the arrests on her blog and Twitter, began giving interviews to the international press, wrote a powerful open letter to Barack Obama and declared a hunger strike. Despite the fact that she is a woman living in a repressive Arab state, Zainab Al-Khawaja is the embodiment of how strong, empowered and amazing women can be, regardless of whether they wear a hijab or burka or not. Zainab Al-Khawaja is doing something about it and I find her inspirational.

So no matter how idealistic and naive and plain old cheesy this sounds, the second thing that struck me today, looking at my statistics, is that surprisingly I can do something too, something which might actually have some effect. I have no idea who you are or where you read this or how you come across this, but there's a small chance that you - you back there! - might read this page. And I hope that you, who might be interested in the events taking place around the world in this tumultuous year, might come across this post. A decent, kind-hearted and committed individual has been brutally beaten, arrested and is at high risk of torture because he advocates democracy and an end to the abuses he is now subject to.

So send a letter, sign a petition or show your support for Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja and all other political prisoners and peaceful protesters imprisoned in Bahrain.

Details on sending a letter to the Bahraini authorities can be found here.