Syria: Bloggers Rally for Anas Maarawi

This post is part of our special coverage Syria Protests 2011.

Anas Maarawi is the latest Syrian blogger to have been imprisoned. He was detained on Friday July 1, 2011, in his neighborhood of Kafarsouseh in Damascus, and nothing has been heard of him since.

Anas is a well known blogger in Syria and beyond. Apart from his personal blog, Anas Online, he ran a number of tech-blogs and projects, most prominently, Ardroid, which was the first Arabic-language blog to focus on Google's Android OS.


His arrest prompted a campaign for his release. A dedicated blog was set-up, as well as a Facebook page and a Twitter hash tag, #FreeAnas. Many Arabic tech-blogs participated in the campaign, starting with his own pet-project, Ardroid [ar]:

ربما تساءل بعضكم عن سر غياب صديقنا أنس معراوي الذي اعتدنا على مقالاته اليومية المتميزة على صفحات أردرويد.. اعتقل أنس معراوي تعسفياً يوم الجمعة 1-7-2011 في كفرسوسة, دمشق. ولا نعلم عنه شيئا حتى الآن.
أنس المعراوي من خيرة الشباب السوريين وهو مدون ومطور ويب ومهتم بالبرمجيات مفتوحة المصدر ومؤسس موقع أردرويد.

You may have been wondering about the disappearance of our friend Anas Maarawi, whom, we've become used to his special daily articles on this blog. Anas was detained on Friday 1-7-2011, in Kafarsouseh, Damascus. And we have had no information about him since.

Anas Maarawi is one of the finest of Syria's younger generation. He's a blogger, web developer, and an open-source enthusiast. He's also the founder of Ardroid.

The campaign also circulated a video about Anas:

Tech-World, another Arabic tech-blog, wrote about Anas’ arrest [ar]:

تعرفت على أنس المعراوي من خلال مدونة اردويد الرائعة والمتخصصه في مجال نظام الاندرويد ولقد حصل لي شرف لقائه في مؤتمر عرب نت الماضي وكان ولايزال من خيره شباب سوريا ، ولقد سأني خبر اعتقال الزميل أنس في سوريا منذ اسبوع تقريبا ، وكما عرفت أنس عن قرب كان بعيدا عن السياسة فأنس كان يكتب في أغلب تدويناته في مدونته الشخصية عن التقنية ومواضيع عامة ولا يكتب عن الامور السياسية الا الاشياء البسيطة لذلك اتمنى ان تقوم السلطات السورية بإطلاق سراح أنس فمثل أنس يستحق ان تفتخر سوريا به ولا تقوم بإيقافه
I first met Anas Maarawi through his dedicated Android blog, Ardoroid. And I had the honor to meet him at the last ArabNet conference. He was and still is one of the finest Syrians I know. I was very dismayed about the news of his arrest a week ago. I've always knew that Anas was far from politics and most of his writings on his personal blog were about technology or general ideas, and only a few simple things about politics. I hope the Syrian authorities release Anas soon. People like him are to be proud of, not detained.

This post is part of our special coverage Syria Protests 2011.

6 comments

Join the conversation

Authors, please log in »

Guidelines

  • All comments are reviewed by a moderator. Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
  • Please treat others with respect. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.