Amina or a Blogger’s Recklessness

Why is Tom Mac Master so angry? A 40-year-old American man, victim of the success of his blog on which he posed as a young Syrian woman, the now famous Tom was forced to reveal his identity under media pressure. No, the Gay Girl of Damascus (from the name of his blog, a gay girl in Damascus) is not a young lesbian recently kidnapped by Syrian security forces.

This is a bad joke, although it may be well intentioned. Tom Mac Master defended himself by saying that the content of his blog was based on true events that occurred in Syria; however, the consequences of his actions could still be catastrophic.

First, many Syrian democracy activists took great risks by asking questions about the mysterious Amina Abdallah. Asking such questions in a Syria that is prey to a brutally repressive regime is extremely dangerous. Bloggers had even tried to locate Amina after her alleged kidnapping, at the risk of being kidnapped themselves.

Furthermore, the case is being used by the Syrian government to discredit the entire Syrian blogosphere. The regime of Bashar al-Assad has waged electronic warfare on its opponents. Using a variety of methods — network censorship, arrests of bloggers, recruitment of Internet users, etc. — the authorities in Damascus seek to expunge the Syrian Web of its most critical content and replace it with more favorable views.

This case must lead the Syrian authorities to rejoice. One wonders if the regime in Damascus did not leave the matter to swell in order to better exploit it. It is likely that now, whenever a question about the Syrian Democratic movement is posed to a dignitary, he will respond the same way: “What democracy activists? You mean the American blogger who fooled the entire planet? The Syrians are happy. It’s all an invention of Western media.”

After this unfortunate affair, now more than ever, we must support the defenders of liberty in Syria. We must not play the game of the regime and yield to the Sirens who claim the Internet is composed of only rumors and false information. In Syria, as in many countries, anonymity is a guarantee of security. In Vietnam, in Burma, in Iran, knowing the real dangers of transparency on the web, bloggers choose to express themselves online under false names. To date, 125 citizens of the Internet community are imprisoned for their activities online. And they are not named Tom Mac Master.