Facebook and the Egypt uprising

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Cairo: The April 6 Facebook group set up by young Egyptians to protest at high prices in 2008 this week brought tens of thousands onto the streets for anti-regime rallies despite draconian restrictions.

The movement, whose calls to protest are also spread via micro-blogging site Twitter and photo-sharing site Flickr, was created to protest against the cost of living during a strike in the Nile Delta industrial town of Mahalla el-Kobra.

Its name comes from an initial call for a nationwide day of protest on April 6, 2008. Today, the Facebook group has more than 80,000 followers, with many more on Twitter, and its demands have evolved.

It now calls for political reform and democracy, targeting particularly veteran President Hosni Mubarak's monolithic National Democratic Party.

Members are generally well-educated, and officially the group is not politically affiliated.

Nevertheless, the group last year endorsed the reform demands of leading dissident and former UN nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei, and it has also coordinated with the Keffaya opposition movement, in action since 2004.

The group has also expressed support for the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement and criticised the detention of the Islamist group's leaders.

Its leaders have been repeatedly arrested, and the authorities have struggled to censor its presence on the Internet.

On Friday, with mass protests erupting nationwide after noon prayers, the authorities took the drastic measure of cutting much Internet and mobile phone access around Egypt in an attempt to thwart the rising tide of protest.

Unperturbed, one of April 6's founders, Israa Abd el Fatah, said: "We've already announced the meeting places. So we've done it, we no longer need means of communication."

Abd el Fatah insists that she is as unbowed as the movement's demands are unwavering.

"We want the regime to go," Abd el Fatah told AFP. "We've been asking for reforms for 30 years and the regime has never answered or paid attention to our demands."

"We will not stop until the definitive departure of the Egyptian regime.

"It won't just be tomorrow, but the day after and the day after that also. We won't stop, we won't go home," she said.

The nationwide demonstrations, inspired by the 'Jasmine Revolution' in Tunisia, have swelled into the largest uprising in three decades, sending shock waves across the region.

Seven people have been killed - at least five protesters and two policemen - and more than 100 have been injured.

A security official told AFP that around 1,000 people had been arrested since the protests began.

"We've already lost six martyrs and their blood is very dear to us so we're ready to make sacrifices," said Abd el Fatah.
"Freedom has its price -- we're not afraid to pay it and we're able to do it."