A Loud Voice for Egyptian Resistance Movement CAIRO - Mohamed Hashem, a democracy activist, writer, publisher and founder of the Merit Publishing House, which first produced works like "The Yacoubian Building," by Alaa al-Aswany, has recently come under attack from Egypt's military rulers and its politically powerful Islamists. Still, he says he remains undaunted. "There is no such thing as a ceiling to freedoms," Mr. Hashem said in a recent interview at the Merit offices, in a central Cairo building behind a drab entrance daubed with anti-security force slogans. We won't be silent and we won't stop publishing what we want, freely and without being subject to censorship. A televised press conference last month, by a general on the ruling military council, placed the bookseller in the cross hairs. Speaking on Dec. 19, Gen. Adel Emara, a member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, said an anti-government conspiracy had engineered the renewed clashes in Cairo that left 18 protesters dead and hundreds injured. An accompanying video clip showed the interrogation of a teenager, identified only as Mansour, who named Mr. Hashem as the owner of the Merit Publishing building, from which, the youth said, "around 120 people" had distributed free helmets, goggles, gas masks and food to the protesters. Mr. Hashem does not dispute that he handed out first aid kits, blankets and other supplies. He said he would continue to do so if needed, to help protesters facing bullets, shotgun pellets and tear gas fired by the army and security forces. "I will do anything that will prevent people from dying," he said defiantly, in the interview. I will not hold back on anything that I know to be right, in defense of freedom and the rights of citizens. I will keep doing it until I die. Al Hikma, an ultra-conservative Salafi satellite television channel, has joined in the campaign against Mr. Hashem, labeling him an infidel because Merit published a book on the formative years of the Prophet Muhammad a decade ago. Mr. Hashem said that it was these kinds of religiously toned media campaigns that posed the greatest threat to independent publishers. The decisions to censor often originate from publishers and are based on "calculations," Mr. Hashem asserted. When they publish a book that upsets the president or powerful interests, they kill themselves with their own sword. We did not care about the sword or the gold. Merit has been recognized for promoting new writers and opening up spaces for expression, so far issuing about 700 works of fiction and nonfiction. In November the German P.E.N. Center honored Mr. Hashem with the Hermann Kesten Prize, a literary award for supporting persecuted writers. "We are more than a half a million Egyptian pounds in debt," or $83,000 in the hole, Mr. Hashem said, "and if I die today, either by the Islamists of the soldiers, I have three daughters and their inheritance will be in the form of debt." Merit remains in business because of a collective of literati who volunteer their time to produce books and authors who forgo royalties. To Mr. Aswany, it is no surprise for the military rulers to single out Mr. Hashem. The first edition of "The Yacoubian Building," a novel, was released by Merit after being passed up by other publishers. The book, which went on to become an international bestseller, referenced an omnipresent "Big Man," which readers could understand to mean Hosni Mubarak, the former president. Mr. Aswany said Mr. Hashem had been made a target by the military council "to intimidate and terrorize those who are faithful to the revolution." "You are up against a unlawful police state that has everything in its hands - security apparatuses, executive power, everything," Mr. Aswany added. It can do anything to you. Prosecutors have already called in for questioning prominent revolutionary activists, bloggers and public figures, linking them with the recent violent clashes. Mr. Hashem was born in the Nile Delta city of Tanta in 1958, six years after a military coup, later rebranded a revolution, brought the army officer and pan-Arab nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser to power. Freedoms were tightly controlled, Mr. Hashem said. "The regime was the same - oppressive, steeped in graft, despotism and repression," he said. It kept people from speaking and that is more dangerous than killing someone, that he lives without the right to express himself.