CAIRO: Egyptian activists are organizing a demonstration outside the Syrian Embassy in Cairo on Sunday, protesting the nine-month detention of a 19-year-old Syrian blogger. Syrian security bodies summoned Tal El-Melouhy, a student from Homs for questioning on Dec. 27 2009 about an article she wrote and published online. Her blog “Medawwenty” contains articles and poems in support of the Palestinian cause. El-Melouhy's family have not been informed of her whereabouts since the blogger's disappearance last year. On Sept. 1, 2010 the Syrian Committee for Human Rights, an NGO, published an open letter sent from Tal's mother to Syrian President Bashar El-Assad in which she says that she has unsuccessfully “knocked on security bodies' [and] the republican palace's doors and tried all avenues” in an attempt to find out what has happened to her daughter and why she has been detained. El-Melouhy's mother goes to say that she received promises from a security body that her daughter would be released before Ramadan (August). She tells the Syrian president, “Tal is an intelligent student who loves her country and writes what crosses her mind honestly and unguardedly in a way which reflects her age.” Activist Mohamed Maree told Daily News Egypt that it is the fact that El-Melouhy is a teenager which prompted the Arab Network for Human Rights Information and the April 6 Youth Movement to organize the demonstration. “Tal will be a symbol of human rights abuses in Syria. During the protest we will call for her release in addition to the release of other prisoners of conscience such as Haitham El-Maleh, Nour Youssef and Ayyat Essam,” Maree said.
