Free Anas
Update: on the 28th of August, 2011, two months after being detained, Anas is finally free! Thank God! 
We always express compassion and sympathy towards people who get put behind bars for speaking their mind. It’s wrong, inhumane, unjustifiable and it could be you or me. We’re even more concerned when those arrested were not even accused of that horrendous crime to begin with, but we are absolutely enraged when those arrested for committing no crime are people we know and whom we interact with.
This is the case of Anas Maarawi, the Syrian blogger and founder of ArDroid, who dedicated most of his time and effort to blog about the Android OS in Arabic, when there were no Arabic resources on the web at all. Anas, who’s always been a supporter of open-source software, now finds himself confined under lock and key.
This is the latest of the Syrian regime’s atrocities committed every day under the pretext of “reform”. According to close sources, Anas was “detained on Friday 1-7-2011 in Kafarsousah, Damascus. No information about him ever since”.
Anas is not a fake virtual identity and he’s certainly not an American man pretending to be a lesbian fighting a fictitious battle, although I now wish he’d get half of the international support the fake Syrian Lesbian received. Anas is real and is in desperate need for any support he can.
Please, tweet about Anas with the #FreeAnas hashtag. It’s a fact, the Syrian regime has people monitoring the internet, and if they get pressure from people the world over are demanding Anas’s freedom, hopefully they will feel obliged to release him. Some good people have already created a Free Anas Facebook page and a Free Anas blog and some banners people can put on their websites and blogs to raise awareness about Anas’s ordeal.
Finally, my thoughts and prayers are with Anas’s family and friends in these hard times and I hope he’s in good health and will soon return to his loved ones to do what he does best: promote open-source code.
