On the rights of victims of police-abuse
by zoss in Uncategorized, egyptos, rightSince the advent of online video hosting, a number of videos have appeared on the internet showing Egyptian police –to put it very mildly– mistreating and humiliating citizens in the most deplorable ways. Most recently, two videos were widely circulated; one showing a man being violated by some sort of a stick (maybe a broom handle), and the other showing a man being repeatedly slapped on the face. I didn’t link to the videos at the time, and I won’t now, for reasons that will hopefully become clear by the end of the post.
First, let us examine the process with which these kinds of videos become available. It is hard to tell who’s doing the recording in every single case, so a generalization wouldn’t be fair. However, in many cases it appears –or at the very least it is plausible– that the incidents are being recorded by the perpetrators’ colleagues (talk about adding insult to injury.) Some videos are then leaked and posted online (I say leaked because I can’t imagine someone being arrogant or stupid enough to post self-implicating videos online, but I could be wrong.) These videos are then further popularized when certain popular blogs link to them (if not being the ones to post them in the first place). And, in the case of the aforementioned incidents, a certain newspaper report, complete with stills from the videos, brought the topic to a wider audience (which reportedly led to an investigation by the general prosecutor.)
As far as I can tell, not a single link in this chain has gone to any length to conceal the identity of the victims. Of course, one doesn’t expect the perpetrators of such heinous crimes to respect their victims’ privacy, but what about everyone else?
Don’t get me wrong; I am totally in favor of making these records available to the public, if not for anything but for raising awareness at the very least; I also applaud the efforts of these bloggers, and the reporters who helped bring this case to the public. However, in the course of raising awareness and fighting for justice, one has to be careful not to trample on the rights of these victims; one should employ all possible means to spare them any extra humiliation.
There are ways to tread that line. In these particular cases, simple video-editing to distort the faces of the victims would’ve done the trick; it would’ve concealed the identity of the victims while still delivering the desired impact.
I have not provided any legal arguments here, partly because I am ignorant of such arguments (and maybe those knowledgeable about the law could enlighten me (us) on that perspective,) but mainly because this is intended as a friendly reminder of sentiments that I believe should be upheld by anyone claiming to defend human rights.
Comment by forsoothsayer — 27/11/2006 @ 11:13
i do know that when stuff like this comes to court in canada they refer to the victims using initials only if they are minors or if the crime was committed when they were minors. bas keda.
Comment by zoss — 27/11/2006 @ 16:44
Thanks, forsoothsayer. I’ve always thought that in the case of offenders, their identity is concealed by Canadian law if they’re minors, or if they’ve committed the crime when they were. I didn’t know, however, that this extended to victims.
Comment by Amnesiac — 27/11/2006 @ 16:51
In the UK a respected news programme recently broadcast a mobile phone video of a pregnant woman (accused of the ‘crime’ of making out with a man in public) being tortured and humiliated (the police stipped and beat her before shaving her head and painting her scalp green) in Chechnya. The programme’s producers made no attempt to hide her identity.
My own view is that where the victim makes known that s/he does not want their identity revealed, this should be respected. But otherwise such videos serve a number of crucial purposes; they present the stark reality of torture -albeit in a distressing fashion; the video you refer to where the man was sodimised anally with a stick is being given in evidence against those implicated in the victim’s torture; (occasionally) they shock people out of their apathy and, finally; they provide incontrovertible evidence that unspeakable types of torture do happen, thus challenging apologists who insist on claiming that all the police do is deliver a few harmless slaps to make their victims sing…
And ultimately it is the police who are humilated by these videos, rather than the victims.
Comment by zoss — 30/11/2006 @ 4:34
Amnesiac; I did acknowledge the importance of publicly broadcasting these videos (thanks for elucidating the point) and I explicitly mentioned how these desired effects could be achieved without revealing the identity of the victim. I also see no problem in presenting the unedited version to the court as evidence.
I agree that it should be up to the victim. But I think the rule should be to protect the identity, and the exception is when the victim decides to release the info. Not the other way around. In the two cases I mentioned, I believe the victims were not asked for permission (the newspaper issued a call to the victims to come forward to help with the investigation after publishing their photos.)
Comment by Alaa — 1/1/2007 @ 3:13
it’s difficult to decide, on the one hand you need to find the victim if you want to try and prosecute the torturers and publishing the videos without concealing their identity means that more people get to see them and you have more chances of someone identifying the victim (this is actually what’s happening with one of the videos).
on the other hand yeah I can see a situation where this would make it even worse for the victim.
these videos have been circulating through bluetooth for a while, it’s the same with Abu Gharib torturers assume total immunity (for very good reasons, nothing bad ever happened to a torturer in Egypt even when taken to court and proven guilty they get very light sentences).
my take is, in this day and age we have no privacy at all, trying to protect the myth of privacy is just a waste of energy.
anyways some experienced human rights activists have offered to arrange training sessions for interested bloggers on similar issues.
I have no idea how I’d go about adding a black bar or blur effect in a video and I’m a techie, I’m sure it would help if someone posted easy tutorials using free tools that work with most major codecs (if such a thing exists).