Turkey has moved to launch an international initiative for the sign of "R4BIA" -- a symbol of the August 14 massacre by Egyptian security forces against anti-coup demonstrators staging a sit-in protest in Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya Square that killed hundreds of protesters.
The international platform (www.rabiaplatform.com) will be inaugurated on September 16, Monday, at Istanbul Congress Center at 11.00 a.m.
Turkish journalist Abdurrahman Dilipak, who led the initiative, told the Anadolu Agency that social networks like Twitter and Facebook would be used to announce the activities of the platform to its world-wide members.
"R4bia platform will bring together world civil society organizations, media workers, volunteers and artists. It will be a platform in which we discuss how a new world would be built with the help of science, art, philosophy, politics and social ethics."
Dilipak added that every country would make up its own platform, which in turn would be added to that of other countries.
"When number of our members reached 1 million, we will organize an online protest at Tahrir Square on digital map with everyone picking the banner they wanted."
- Rabia sign
“Rabaa” meaning four or the fourth in Arabic has become the sign of anti-coup protests in Egypt. Just a few hours before the massacre on August 14, anti-coup protesters in Egypt tried to voice their demands to the world by raising their four fingers.
Firstly, a website called "R4bia.com" was founded within the scope of a campaign which is led by the activists in Turkey who were anti-coup, and later a hashtag of ‘Whatisr4bia’ was composed in Twitter, an online social networking service.
The hashtag has ranked among Trend Topics (TT) in a high increase in Turkey, and then took place among the world lists. It has become a global TT in which users from all parts in the world showed interest from Asia to Europe and from Africa to the USA.
Thousands of users notably in Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, Bosnia Herzegovina, Malaysia and Indonesia, and then in Europe and America shared both written messages and photographs under the hashtag of "Whatisr4bia".
"Rabaa sign", which is used as a freedom symbol spreading from Egypt to whole world, has been highly used as a profile picture on social media as well. Number of those using "Rabaa sign" as a profile picture is reported to be over 100 million.
