Account of blogger and campaigner who has won awards for documenting human rights abuses shut down

Twitter has faced criticism after the account of a prominent Egyptian journalist and campaigner was suspended.

Wael Abbas wrote on Facebook that Twitter had sent “an email saying my account is suspended for an allotted time, which they did not specify, and for reasons they did not specify too”.



At the time of the suspension last week, Abbas had 350,000 followers on Twitter. Notable figures backing the restoration of his account include Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion and chairman of the Human Rights Foundation.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wael Abbas’s Twitter account as it now appears. Photograph: @EmnaMizouni/Twitter

Urging Twitter to overturn the suspension, the Egyptian human rights activist Sherif Azer described Abbas’s account as “a live archive to the events of the revolution and till today one of few accounts still documenting human rights abuses in Egypt”.

شريف عازر (@sherif_azer) As a PhD student working on cyberactivism during Arab Spring, I can't accept @Twitter decision to close @waelabbas account as it is a live archive to the events of the revolution and till today in one of few accounts still documenting human rights abuses in Egypt. Please open it

Abbas is blogger-in-chief for the website Misr Digit@l, which posted about the suspension, saying it involved the deletion of “over 250,000 tweets. Dozens of thousands of pictures, videos and live streams from the middle of every crisis in Egypt with date stamp on them, reporting on people who got tortured, killed or missing. Live coverage of events as they happened in the street.”

In 2007, Abbas’s YouTube account was shut down after he posted videos depicting police brutality in Egypt. He went on to win several honours, including the Knight international journalism award, for his documenting of human rights abuses. In 2016, Abbas was arrested when returning to Egypt from South Korea, and in 2011 he used his Twitter account to document being arrested by the army.



The newspaper Al-Ahram reported that Abbas had been suspended from Twitter for the “intention to incite violence”, to which Abbas replied on Facebook: “The biggest official newspaper in Egypt is happy my Twitter is suspended. This tells much doesn’t it? Need I say anything now?”

Twitter has yet to give a public reason for the suspension.