465 days

Athima Chansanchai

Memorial site remembers Egyptians killed in protests

Through various blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the world has been following the events unfolding in Egypt for weeks now and one site has focused on those who gave the ultimate sacrifice during the protests — their lives.

Egypt Remembers is the first ever 1000memories group memorial page from the fledging site, which debuted in July with a major revamp in December. The site differs from other memorial websites in allowing friends and family to reminisce and add notes, photos, videos and other memories on a scrolling page.

The memorial page is already on its way to being viral, with more than 150,000 unique views in the first 48 hours, and now has been shared via Facebook more than 50,000 times and via Twitter more than 4,400 times.

TechCrunch reports that the page came about upon the request and inspiration of Toronto-based Egyptian entrepreneur Mahmoud Hashim, who wrote a heartfelt e-mail to the site's founders (Rudy Adler, Jonathan Good and Brett Huneycutt) to help him and other Egyptians "in deep pain seeing those young people die...turn that pain into a monument of pride."

By the next morning (Friday), the site was already up and running, thanks to those founders staying up all night to create it after reading Hashim's note. They pulled the initial list of casualties from a public Google doc (that now lists 152 names, ages, occupations, notes on where/how they were killed), with 143 that have been killed in the anti-Mubarak protests after Jan. 25. A notable exception is Khaled Said, whose alleged murder launched the protests.

People have since been e-mailing more names and photos directly onto Egypt Remembers. The 1000memories co-founders are providing links to those memorial pages to the main Egypt Remembers page after verification of the deaths through Human Rights Watch, which has people on site in Egypt.

Since men comprise most of the victims, the few women with photos stand out. I clicked on one photo and found: Sally Magdy Zahran, 23, an English translator killed Jan. 28 with a blow to the back of her head from a bat. Inside her page are photos of a smiling, dynamic individual whose bio reveals that she is a Cairo native, daughter of a university professor, who "had no political affiliations and friends confirm that she was not an activist. She was a passionate young woman who was critical of living conditions in Egypt. She had never joined protests before, explained Sobhy, but often joined Facebook groups that called for socio-economic reforms such as raising the minimum wage."

Traffic for the site is only going to grow, as TechCrunch reports:

What’s more remarkable is that a little more than half of its traffic is coming directly from Egypt according to Adler, due to shares from influencers like New York Times’ human rights blogger Nick Kristof and popular Egyptian televangelist Amr Khaled, who shared it on his 2 million strong Facebook fan page.

More stories about the Egypt protests:

• Google manager complicates role in Egypt protests
• Egypt's online users debate merit of more protests
• Techies make way for stranded Egyptians to be heard