31-year-old Lebanese comic Nour Hajjar on the awk.word stage. (Credit: Courtesy of awk.word)
BEIRUT — Actor Nour Hajjar was detained for 11 hours (9 A.M.-8 P.M.) at the military police headquarters in Rihaniyeh (Baabda) Thursday.
Contacted by L'Orient-Le Jour, Hajjar declined to make a statement. He was summoned Thursday, two days after a video of him was posted on the awk.word platform — a community of comedians — showing him on stage telling a joke about the Lebanese army.
According to information obtained by L'Orient-Le Jour, the 31-year-old presented himself at police headquarters accompanied by his lawyer Diala Chehade. He was questioned until 1 P.M., and held until 8 P.M. pending a decision by judge Mona Hankir, the deputy government commissioner of the Military Court.
Investigators asked Diala Chehade, lawyer for Nour Hajjar and awk.word, to appear at military police headquarters Monday, accompanied by awk.word co-founder Dany Abou Jaoude. According to an awk.word spokesman, military personnel on Thursday also visited KED, the Karantina venue where awk.word stages its shows, without finding any representatives of the group.
In the video in question, Hajjar is shown on stage. "Have you noticed that all [Toters' couriers] are in the army?" he asks. "Can you imagine if Israel strikes [Lebanon] and the whole army is at Toters? We'll see 30 mopeds arrive at the border! One rocket and we'll be splashing Israel with honey-mustard sauce," he continues to a laughing audience.
Awk.word, which bills itself as Lebanon's first stand-up comedy platform, shows these few seconds on its social media accounts. The awk.word initiative was launched in 2018 by young performers with the aim of creating a community of Arabic-language stand-up comedy fans. On Instagram, awk.word has 128,000 followers and 178,000 followers on TikTok.
"This is the first time someone has been summoned because of a sketch broadcast on awk.word's networks," Abou Jaoude told L'Orient-Le Jour Thursday. As this story was posted, no one had asked awk.word to remove the video from social media.
"Hajjar's joke highlights that Lebanese soldiers have low salaries and are forced to have a second job," Abou Jaoude continued. "Our aim is not to harm the Lebanese army, but to talk about the general situation in the country. Humor is used to shed light on society's problems."
Security services personnel have been hit hard by Lebanon's severe socio-economic crisis since 2019. A soldier's average monthly salary is around $50, compared with some $800 before the crisis, and that of an officer is around $100. Faced with this situation, several countries have provided aid in recent years. Since the end of June, the United States and the UN have been providing temporary financial support to over 70,000 soldiers, who will receive $100 a month for six months, and Qatar has also granted financial aid to soldiers.
Two months ago, the Military Court fined comedian Shaden Fakih LL 1,8000,00. The young woman was accused of "humiliating and damaging the reputation of the Internal Security Forces," in a comedic video in which she calls the ISF and asks if they could deliver some sanitary pads, since Lebanon's COVID-19 restrictions made it impossible for her to leave her flat.
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