The Middle East Times reports that Egyptian bloggers, in an effort to expose rights abuses, will host an online festival of torture videos to run alongside the Cairo Film Festival. Prizes, including a “Golden Whip,” will be awarded to the best entrants.
The parallel festival is the brainchild of a blogger named Walid, who seeks to remain anonymous, and will feature “controversial acts of torture allegedly committed by the security authorities.”
Egypt’s blogosphere has exposed numerous incidents of police torture, including that of minibus driver Imad al-Kabir who was shown being sodomized with a stick in widely distributed video footage shot on a police mobile phone.Two policemen were jailed for three years earlier this month for that crime in a rare case of security forces members being sentenced for abusing detainees.
While the sarcastic “Golden Whip” weakens the seriousness of the problem, the blog contest will certainly draw more attention to this pressing problem.
