(Read all about it.) Youtube shut down the account of Wael Abbas, a prominent Egyptian blogger who is known for posting videos of police brutality in his native country. This comes one day after the Republican CNN/Youtube debate.
What a shame. Here I thought we were getting places; bringing the candidates to a human level, answering questions asked by ordinary citizens on a public forum. But now, we see that the forum we thought was open and free has a breaking point. Quite unfortunately, that breaking point is much less tolerant than I had originally thought. I do understand the need to block pornography; that's not what the service is for. But this? Really? Come on, let the public speak!
Many of the videos, taken with cell phones, are leaked to him by anonymous posters who find that Abbas will report on the stories when mainstream Egyptian media will not.
Hmm, sounds familiar...
UPDATE: Here is a link to his site, read all about it, if you speak Arabic.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
hi,
i just got routed to your blog via bp's. i can't believe how young you are and it kinda puts me to shame as a 20 something yearold person who didn't really think that much during my teens to bother myself with big world stuff. I don't know if politics is necessarily the right way to go about it but you're certainly more grown up than a lotta teens are, thinking wise.
As for the wael thing. The reason youtube took down his account is because it doesn't allow degrading videos to be posted and i don't know if you know about the torture videos that were on there, but they obviously showed the victims receiving very degrading treatment. I had mixed feelings about this. Despite being egyptian and fully supporting Wael's work in exposing torture, i didn't think he went about it the right way by putting it on youtube. IT would have been much better if he had given the video to human rights organisation which would have distributed it responsibly and offered some dignity to the victim in question. I think to have a video of oneself being sodomised spread around the world is quite traumatic for the victim because he will never be able to escape it.
hi,
i just got routed to your blog via bp's. i can't believe how young you are and it kinda puts me to shame as a 20 something yearold person who didn't really think that much during my teens to bother myself with big world stuff. I don't know if politics is necessarily the right way to go about it but you're certainly more grown up than a lotta teens are, thinking wise.
As for the wael thing. The reason youtube took down his account is because it doesn't allow degrading videos to be posted and i don't know if you know about the torture videos that were on there, but they obviously showed the victims receiving very degrading treatment. I had mixed feelings about this. Despite being egyptian and fully supporting Wael's work in exposing torture, i didn't think he went about it the right way by putting it on youtube. IT would have been much better if he had given the video to human rights organisation which would have distributed it responsibly and offered some dignity to the victim in question. I think to have a video of oneself being sodomised spread around the world is quite traumatic for the victim because he will never be able to escape it.
It's a shame, but "a reader" has a point. He definitely should get these out, but maybe, for the sake of the victims, youtube is not the best medium for all of the videos.
Post a Comment