Per is regarded as one of the most active foreign journalists covering the Egyptian labor strike wave and human rights abuses for a number of Swedish publications as well as activist websites like Electronic Intifada. He also writes in his blog Egypt and Beyound, where he identifies himself as:

A freelance journalist currently based in Cairo. Covering the daily struggles for a another Egypt and another Middle East, that are too often made invisible in the narratives of mainstream media.

As usual, Egyptian Leftist was the first to publish "Free Per" banners on his blog.

Hossam El Hamalawy was one of the first to break the news:

Swedish journalist and blogger Per Bjorklund has been stopped around half an hour ago at the Cairo Airport. An Immigration Police Officer told him his “name [was] on the computer,” according to Per with whom I spoke on the phone few mins ago.

Per is in some room at the airport, where there are other people, and he awaits an explanation from the police.

Another foreign journalist, James Buck commented on his blog Journalism not a crime:

Per is a great journalist who helped me get connected when I was in Egypt. Looks like Cairo has decided to keep dissenting journalists out of the country. This is a big step backward for press freedom.

On a different note, Egyptian journalist and blogger, Scarr, published a touching post tackling the other side of the story.

Per was one of the people involved in the To Gaza march – as was Travis Randall – but other foreigners on that march have been in and out of Egypt since then without problems. No, there’s no great plan. This (“your name is in our computer”) is just yet another instance of what they do best: bullying disguised as bureaucratic procedure, as thought-out policy.

Talking about Per's girlfriend she said:

The last call I got in this whole sorry saga was an hour ago, when A rang me, still at the airport. No-one had bothered to tell her that Per had been deported (or at least told that he was going to be deported. His phone was switched off after Hamalawy spoke to him). She had been waiting there, alone, all that time. She broke down in tears.

First tweets about Per's detention.

Egyptian blogger, Mostafa, questioned if the repetitive incidents was a sign for new measures taken by the government against journalists:

Per is a brave journalist and his writing is almost always highly informative. He is a nice guy. This is both outrageous and depressing. I wonder if this stupid government is trying to reduce the number of foreign journalists in anticipation of the next two politically intense years.

More details can be found in a post by Joseph Mayton at Bikya Masr and Zeinobia at Egyptian Chronicles.

A few participants reflected on this experience, and shared some ideas on their blogs:

Jasmine Elnadeem from Egypt, wrote:

It was just only by chance…. I applied for the Young Leaders Visiting Programme (YLVP) 2009, which was organized by the Swedish institute.
The Swedish Institute Young Leaders Visitors Program (YLVP) is an intercultural leadership program with focus on social media as a tool for positive change. The program invites young opinion-makers from Sweden and selected countries in the MENA region who are actively working for social change in their respective contexts.

People nowadays are starting to say that social media is going to change the world; nothing could be farther from the truth.
Yes, for most of us, social media has changed our lives in some meaningful way, but social media can’t change the world, people do through social media, it’s a tool.

Nothing in this world is going to change unless we make it change. The responsibility for change does not fall onto technology but onto people. We can have all the greatest tools and gadgets in the world but if we don’t use them for change then guess what, change isn’t going to happen.

Let’s remember that social media and technology gives us the ability to make changes happen, but it’s ultimately up to us to use these abilities to make change happen.

Writing for Menassat, a regional news website based in Beirut, Lebanon, Alexandra Sandels from Sweden wrote:

The YLVP 2009 invited what the Swedish institute described as “young opinion-makers from Sweden and selected countries in the MENA region who are actively working for social change in their respective contexts.”

The program itself focused in large part on leadership and teamwork with a special component of training in social media tools. The first week was spent in Grisslehamn and the remaining two in Stockholm where participants attended lectures and worked on group projects at the digital media school Hyper Island.

In addition to the Arab participants, five Swedish journalists took part in the program.

“YLVP is designed to give you innovative tools to shape public opinion in cutting-edge media while strengthening your intercultural and leadership skills. You will be part of an exclusive network that will boost creativity and support your personal and professional development, while also laying the platform for a more connected future,” said the Swedish Institute in a statement describing the program.

At the beginning of the program, participants were divided into groups of 4-5 people and given the task to develop an idea for an innovative project using social media tools. A stream of initiatives was presented, ranging from web portals for alternative musicians in the Middle East to an online graffiti network, and a web-based recruitment agency for volunteers interested in working in human rights organizations in the Arab world.

And finally, Jordanian Rami AbdelRahman, who lives in Sweden, had this to say about the program:

To this extent, the Swedish institute arranged for an opinion building program, entitled “Young Leaders Visitors Program” targeting opinion builders in the MENA and Sweden, to work on their skills within social media, intercultural group work, leadership… etc. The course started in a very relaxed spa hotel in Grisslehamn, about an hours' drive north of Stockholm, right on the Baltic sea.

The idea was simple: work our brains out trying to find creative solutions in very stressful schedules. It turned out we were not creative enough: we were tasked with finding impossible things that could happen, we mentioned living underwater, living on mars, world peace, etc, and it turns out that 80% of our choices were predicted by our creativity lecturer.

Transparency International, Donzella writes about her country's ranking, in Arabic:

“EU offers reassurance to Ukraine,” read a BBC headline. “EU offers no promises to hopeful Ukraine,” wrote the Irish Times. “EU Makes Positive Noises But Offers Only Vague Deal to Ukraine,” stated Deutsche Welle. “Nervous EU offers Ukraine hope for the future but no seat at the table,” concluded The Times.

The negative part of the assessment of the Summit's results stems from the EU's decision not to include the term “membership perspective” in the description of Ukraine’s future relationship with the EU - a phrase, which, according to Vitaly of The 8th Circle, “would identify Ukraine’s EU aspirations as something more than a hypothetical idea”:

[…] To myself, I thought that this is not surprising. With the EU still digesting the 2004 and 2007 enlargement waves, experiencing the Romania-Bulgaria fatigue syndrome, and dealing with an internal problem caused by Ireland’s vote against the Lisbon constitution treaty, any talk of further enlargement perspective for other states, especially those like Ukraine with 46 million citizens or Turkey with 70 million, must be nauseating. Although, smaller states, like Serbia with a population of 7 million, have a more realistic perspective as we have recently learned from Mr. Barroso […].

The 8th Circle points at another alleged reason for deciding against Ukraine's “European perspective” - the ongoing political crisis in Ukraine - but argues that “what Ukraine is going through right now SHARES quite a bit with the European values”:

[…] Furthermore it is puzzling why the withdrawal of one section from the ruling coalition, and the consequent potential for a pre-term election is NOT an example of shared values between the EU and Ukraine. As a democracy with competitive, free and fair elections, Ukraine is attempting to find an institutional solution that will accommodate all of its political actors.

It is a democratic process through which every democratic state must pass through if it is to move beyond the adjective - “transitional.” Well consolidated democracies, such as Canada and Japan are currently going through the same coalition formation/pre-term election process, and Belgium in the past year took 196 days to form a coalition, which almost beat their 1977 record of 208 days. […]

J Clive Matthews of Nosemonkey's EUtopia thinks that the EU should adopt a more practical approach to dealing with Ukraine:

[…] So Ukraine’s less welcome than tiny Albania and Macedonia? Less welcome than Serbia, a country built on a genocidal civil war and still in dispute with much of the EU over the status of Kosovo?

Yeah, cheers for that. Really encouraging. Nice one.

The promise of future EU membership can be a force for good, inspiring positive shifts towards greater democratic freedoms. But the promise has to be made. Taking a carrot and stick approach is a tried-and-tested method for getting people to do what you want - and that goes for countries too. Yet in the case of Ukraine, the EU’s carrot would appear to be largely imaginary - while at the same time, Ukrainians know that Russia has both stick and carrot, and isn’t afraid to use either.

Taras of Ukrainiana takes a harsh stance on the performance of Ukraine's politicians:

[…] Sure, Euro-beggars can’t be Euro-choosers. Especially if you come to the negotiation table in such a grotesque disarray.

In the meantime, let our oligarchs buy a little more of Monaco. Maybe then we’ll have our chance to join the EU? […]

Part of the passage above is actually a reaction to Victor Yushchenko's seemingly awkward and inappropriately positive response to what Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly said on behalf of the EU at the end of the Summit. Ukrainiana posted a news report broadcast by one of Ukrainian TV stations and provided an English translation of the Ukrainian voiceover translation of Sarkozy's words:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy: This association agreement [to be signed in 2009] does not close any paths, nor does it open any paths. That’s all we could give.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko: We very much appreciate what we reached today.

It turns out, however, that Sarkozy's remark has been mistranslated, and the incorrect translation was then featured prominently in the Ukrainian and a few Western media outlets (more about it - here). The original statement - “[…] cet accord d’association ne ferme aucune piste, que même il en ouvre” - apparently translates as “[…] this association agreement does not close any route, it even opens some.”

“Well, let's see what that means in practical terms,” concludes Ukrainiana after posting a correction.

The 8th Circle believes that the EU should “stay engaged with its Eastern Neighborhood” and that the Polish-Swedish Eastern Partnership project might be “a good small step in that direction.” Here is why:

[…] This partnership more than anything will show that the EU retains its leadership role in Europe by staying actively engaged with “neighborhood countries” that are at various stages of democratic and economic development.

[…]

Note that the question is not about making a promise of membership or candidateship - like the one made by Barroso vis-a-vis Serbia - rather it is about signaling to politicians in Kyiv and the Ukrainian population that if they want to and if they reform accordingly, then the EU is a viable option. […]