There was a fair amount of coverage about the apparent arrest of “Amina Arraf”, the pseudonym of openly gay Syrian blogger behind ‘Gay Girl In Damascus,’ which did a lot for getting word out about human rights issues in Syria. Except it turns out that Amina was invented by 40-year-old Tom McMaster, from Georgia.

McMaster had cultivated the identity from the University of Edinburgh, which is where he’s at, but when the blog came under scrutiny for pulling mislabeled photos of people from Facebook, and for Amina’s reluctance to communicate with anybody via any medium other than text, things started to unravel, eventually forcing McMaster to come clean.

I mean, look, the guy had good intentions – in his apology to his readers, McMaster says:

the facts on this blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone — I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about.

Which is super and all, except McMaster has now undermined activism for these issues by calling into question any other voices that are legitimately and bravely protesting oppressive regimes in the Middle-East. As opposed to, you know, the University of Edinburgh, which is where McMaster is.

Head t0 the WP for a closer analysis on how the whole spiel came to light.

[Source :Washington Post]
[Image via Gawker]