Google shuts down antitorture activist's YouTube account
Google may not be evil, but it's not much interested in fighting it, either. At least, that seems to be the takeaway after Google-owned YouTube shut down award-winning journalist and antitorture activist Wael Abbas's account. Abbas had uploaded nearly 100 clips depicting police brutality, voting irregularities and antigovernment demonstrations in Egypt. And last year, some of Abbas's clips of police brutality against an Eygptian bus driver lead to the conviction of two policemen who were sentenced to three years in jail. But for now, Abbas's YouTube account reads, "This account is suspended."
"[Google] closed [the account] and they sent me an email saying that it will be suspended because there were lots of complaints about the content, especially the content of torture," Abbas told Reuters.
YouTube rules prohibit videos with "graphic or gratuitous violence," and this likely led to Abbas's ban. But other human rights activists object to that characterization. "The goal is not showing the violence, it is showing police brutality," Gamal Eid, head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, told Reuters. "If his goal was just to focus on violence without any goal, that is a problem. But Wael is showing police brutality in Egypt." And Google just chose to close its eyes.
