Egyptian blogger Abdal Karim Soliman was released from jail after a massive effort pressing for his release. He had been arrested simply for what he wrote on his blog, which was a denunciation of attacks by Muslims on a Coptic nun. It sparked an outrage in the Egyptian blogosphere, prompting a worldwide campaign on his behalf. Bloggers wrote posts to create the buzz, readers wrote letters to the Egyptian embassy, and it took off from there. The Egyptian government finally buckled and released him. It was the end of The Sandmonkey’s post, however, that made me start thinking about this as something greater.

How could I forget? Thanks to everyone who sent an e-mail or a letter to the egyptian embassy or their elected representitive over AbdalKarim’s arrest, thanks to everyone who signed the petition, who went and protested in the US in front of the egyptian embassy, who put up a banner, who wrote a post on it. Thanks to everyone who got involved basically, egyptians and non-egyptians, because I have a feeling that he wouldn’t have been released this fast if it wasn’t for all of you. Thank you!

After observing this phenomenon, and it has occurred many times before (which simply highlights the amazing power of the blogosphere as an organic entity), I noticed the peculiar way that the blogosphere is acting in many ways like Amnesty International when it was at its height back in the 1980’s. Nowadays, Amnesty International is a sad excuse for a human rights organizations; its leadership filled with uninspired aging hipsters, its campaigns dead in the water, and its grassroots movement more concerned about who’ll bring “the brownies” for next week’s film showing.

The tactics are similar. Create a buzz. Get a lot of people involved in something relatively simple but effective. And do it. Writing letters is the perfect thing. It’s simple and consumes very little time, but with many people it can have a lot of persuasive power. Amnesty International used this strategy to campaign on behalf of dissidents in the Soviet Union. The blogosphere is doing it now for dissidents all over the world, and with amazing dedication. Hundreds, if not thousands, of letters were probably written at very little personal or bureaucratic cost, and in an extraordinary amount of time.

It seems to me that as time goes on, NGOs and people concerned with human rights will increasingly take to the web for those reasons laid out. It’s cheaper,quicker, and you can draw influence from a global pool. An organization as large and lumbering as Amnesty International will find it tough to make the transition, but even so, it hasn’t shown the willpower to make real change in more than a decade.

(By the way, has anyone noticed that there definitely isn’t a campaign on Abdal Karim Soliman behalf over at the AI website?)