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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Gaza police shaving heads of young men in crackdown on western fashion |
| 2013-04-29 |
| smail Helou was working at his family's petrol station on a Thursday afternoon when a police jeep pulled up. The plain-clothed officers ordered him to get into the vehicle. He was blindfolded and taken to a police station, where his legs were bound to a wooden plank and the soles of his feet were repeatedly beaten with a plastic pipe. Then they tried to shave off the gelled spikes of hair on his head. "I was screaming and crying. It was the most painful thing I have ever faced. My feet were blue and I couldn't walk for three days," he said. Bruises on his soles were still visible three weeks later. After the ordeal, Helou, 22, went to a barbershop to get his ravaged hair cropped. Now shorn of his one-inch spikes, he has been given no reason by the police for his detention and beating. But his experience is shared by other young men in Gaza City. Over the past month, at least 40 men have had their heads shaved by Hamas officers in a pattern of intimidation and abuse aimed at enforcing Islamic mores governing personal appearance, according to the human rights organisation Al Mezan. The individuals have been targeted for sporting "western" hairstyles or wearing low-slung jeans that reveal underwear. But one, to whom the Guardian spoke, insisted he was guilty of neither "offence", but was beaten and shaved simply as a mechanism of social control. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #4 I don't know, seems like a VERY GOOD thing To bad a little thing like Joo-hating ruins it all, eh James? |
| Posted by: Pappy 2013-04-29 20:01 |
| #3 Ahhh, ,the tolerance of the RoP. Such nice people. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2013-04-29 16:07 |
| #2 RJ I think you had a warning for that sort of comment before. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2013-04-29 13:32 |
| #1 I don't know, seems like a VERY GOOD thing, there's a lot of Men I'd cut their hair, but I can't get away with it. Or turn their Ball Cap Straight.( Like it or not, yes Black Infants, I mean you.) |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2013-04-29 13:05 |