Sunday, August 01, 2010

Torture museum in Egypt highlights grim past

Gulf News (Ramadan Al Sherbini)

Egyptology news is a bit thin on the ground at the moment so I'm throwing the odd item in that might be of interest from more recent areas of Egypt's past.

Egypt will soon host a first of its kind torture museum, exhibiting various tools used to harm and intimidate people around the world, in a bid to expose history's oppressors.

Egyptian reasercher Mohammad Abdul Wahab told Gulf News that he hoped that his museum would deter woul-be oppressors from resorting to torture.

To Abdul Wahab, human history is teeming with examples of horrifying oppression inflicted mostly on dissident intellectuals and politicians. In his view, one of the best ways to deter would-be oppressors is to expose those of the past.

Therefore, Abdul Wahab, who lived for years in the US, has spent almost a decade collecting tools of torture from different eras and countries. Now they are displayed in his gallery at Al Maryutia near the famous Giza Pyramids.

At present only members of the media and human rights advocates have been allowed to tour the gallery. But Abdul Wahab promised he would open it to the public in the near future.

1 comment:

Julia Thorne said...

Interesting, though I'd like to know in what way it's the first of its kind. I visited the torture museum in Amsterdam many years ago, and a quick Google search also shows museums in San Francisco, San Gimignano (Italy), Wisconsin, Prague and Rhine! Unfortunately, the article doesn't seem to go into enough detail to make this clear.