Two years ago at the Amnesty UK Media Awards, we honoured Azerbaijani newspaper editor Eynulla Fatullayev with the AIUK Special Award for Journalism Under Threat. Eynulla is an outspoken journalist who has been imprisoned since 2007 on a series of trumped up charges, including defamation, terrorism and incitement to ethnic hatred.

Even though the European Court of Human Rights have quashed some of the charges and called for his release, he remains under lock and key on a more recent conviction for drugs possession brought to dodge the ECHR ruling. We firmly believe that all the charges against Eynulla have been fabricated to silence his critical reporting of the Azerbaijani government, and that Eynulla is a prisoner of conscience.

As we prepare for the 2011 Media Awards, we’re renewing our calls to free Eynulla Fatullayev with a twitter action led by Channel 4’s Jon Snow. Journalists will be taking the action at tonight’s awards – we need you to join them.

Take our twitter photo action – Eynulla Fatullayevi Azad Et!

What to do:

1. Download and print our Amnesty placard (on white, or on black), or get creative with the message “Eynulla Fatullayevi Azad Et!”, which is  “Free Eynulla Fatullayev!” in Azeri.
2. Take a photo of yourself with our placard or your own version
3. Tweet your picture with the following message:
   I’m calling on @presidentaz to free wrongly imprisoned journalist #Eynulla Fatullayev in #Azerbaijan [link to your pic]
   Please keep both of the hashtags so we can find your image and so the message reaches people interested in Azerbaijan.
4. Send a second message encouraging your followers to take part:
   Join me and send your own message urging the release of Eynulla Fatullayev – find out how at http://amn.st/eynulla
5. If you don’t want to take a photo, please join in and send a tweet to @presidentaz – remember to add both hashtags so we can see it!

Have a look at the pictures being tweeted to @presidentaz in our lovely twitter widget:

UPDATE, 25th May: What an amazing response! We’ve seen well over 600 tweets so far, and an unexpected response from Azerbaijan – check our new blog post for details.

Woman holding a sign which says 'Egyptians Creating Their Future', Al-abidin, Cairo, Feb 2011.

The media caravan has moved on and Egypt is yesterday’s news. Which is precisely why it’s so important to focus on what’s actually happening now that former president Hosni Mubarak and others are under arrest and the country has supposedly turned a corner once and for all.

How have things actually changed?

Well, if you ask some of the people who are still turning out in Tahrir Square you might get the answer: they haven’t.

Certainly the army has been cracking down on small demonstrations there with alarming violence. For example on 9 April soldiers used live ammunition, rubber bullets, tear gas, electric batons and sticks to break up a peaceful demonstration in the square. Two people were killed, many more were injured and at least 21 people were detained. A month earlier the army also violently cleared Tahrir Square of demonstrators and women protesters told Amnesty that they were beaten, subjected to electric shocks, strip-searched and forced to submit to “virginity checks” and threatened with prostitution charges.

These appalling incidents don’t fit an Egypt “narrative” which many observers have come to accept as almost inevitable – Mubarak repression > Arab Spring revolution > post-revolutionary move to democracy and human rights.

But this was never going to be a smooth ride. On the one hand the human cost of the Egyptian uprising has been huge and truly terrible: 840 people were killed by the security forces and nearly 6,500 (6,467) were injured, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Health. On the other, as Eric Margolis makes clear, Egypt has a kind of “deep state” run by a very powerful military-industrial complex awash with US military aid money.

Amnesty UK director Kate Allen (currently in Cairo assessing how things are changing, especially in terms of women’s rights) told me earlier this week that in Tahrir Square there are still banners up declaring “The army and the people are one”. The painful irony of this if you’ve just been beaten up by a bunch of soldiers in the square hardly needs spelling out.

Meanwhile, if the army is Egypt’s deep state you could say that administrative detention is the country’s deep form of repression. Under Emergency Law powers in force since 1981, the authorities have been imprisoning political opponents, human rights activists, alleged terrorists, Islamists and others without going through all the bother of putting them on trial. In the final years of Mubarak’s ill-starred rule a staggering 10,000 people were thought to have be held in administrative detention, some for as long as 20 years. Some – probably many – of these were also tortured. The human misery caused by this deep repression has been colossal. There need to be thorough investigations into who did the torturing and who ignored court orders for prisoner releases (another issue is Egypt’s role as a “go-to torturer” in the “war on terror”: this also needs thoroughly unearthing).

For more detail, see Amnesty’s new report on administrative detention here.

Nothing is inevitable in Egypt, neither the growth of a human rights culture nor a backward swing to repression and an army-police state run with an iron first. Recent moves by the interim rulers in the Egyptian Cabinet certainly don’t inspire confidence (especially proposals for a law that will criminalise protests and strikes) but a strong turnout and reformist vote in a recent referendum (albeit a flawed one) augers somewhat better.

For me though things are looking worrying. There’s a danger that things are already slipping backwards in Egypt and with the media caravan parked elsewhere there are few journalist to report the slow rewind to repression and dashed hopes. To pillage Gil Scott-Heron’s famous song title one more time – in Egypt the fear is that the post-revolution will not be televised.

David Kato (right) at Copenhague Pride 2010

On Wednesday 26 January, I was at a meeting in Brussels with other Amnesty colleagues from across Europe. It was there that I heard the news that David Kato had been brutally murdered.

David was well known to Amnesty. He was the advocacy officer for the organization Sexual Minorities Uganda and was a champion of LGBT rights. He had been calling for the authorities to take action to end discrimination against LGBT people in Uganda, particularly in tabloid newspapers which have been publishing the names, pictures and personal details of people they believe to be LGBT.

In 2010, David had visited Amnesty Denmark and attended Copenhagen Pride with Helle Jacobsen, AI Denmark’s Discrimination Campaigner. Like all of us, Helle was visibly shocked at the news – David had been in touch with her several times recently and told her he was afraid and she had asked the Danish Foreign Ministry to urge the Ugandan authorities to protect David. Now its sadly too late.

Discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people is a serious problem in Uganda, where the police carry out arbitrary arrests of men and women who they suspect have sex with persons of the same sex. In recent years, there has been increased campaigning against homosexuality in Uganda, led by churches and anti-gay groups. The media have joined this campaign, and have publicly pointed to individuals they accuse of being gay or lesbian. People suspected of being gay have faced death threats and been physically assaulted. Many have been ostracized by their families or faced discrimination, including dismissal from their place of employment.

Frank Mugisha, Executive Secretary of Sexual Minorities Uganda told Amnesty in November 2010 “All this homophobia comes from ignorance. The fact that there’s no space for discussion, no space for understanding, that’s why some of these government officials don’t understand the LGBT issues.”

Here’s a link to Frank’s interview with Amnesty

In October 2009, an “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” was drafted although it has not yet been passed by parliament. If adopted, it could lead to homosexuals being sentenced to death. Amnesty International has called on the government of Uganda and the Ugandan parliament to reject this bill and to review existing laws that criminalize homosexuality.

As Frank said “The only way to honor David’s death is winning the fight for justice and equality. David is gone, many of us will follow him, but we will win eventually. David’s dream was Uganda, where all are treated equally despite their sexual orientation. ”

Please send a message of remembrance for David Kato and solidarity to LGBT organisations in Uganda.

This is a blog post from our campaigner Clare Bracey

We’ve got a great widget for you. it will update you daily with some new simple actions you can take  to help spread the word about our 100 Days campaign.

it’s loading  up there… wait one more second…

and voila…  the widget is here for your to catch and add to your blog, facebook, Myspace, and more.

Thank you for spreading the word and let me know what you think about it.