UAE photo contest website still excluding Israelis (UPDATE: FIAP withdrew patronage)

Last week I reported on the Emirates Photo Competition (EPC), sponsored by the International Federation of Photographic Art (FIAP). Both the cotest and the FIAP have strict anti-discriminatory rules.

And yet the EPC did not have a way for Israelis to register for the competition.

A number of my readers contacted the president of the FIAP, and he responded quickly with a very nice letter saying that

As this is a clear discrimination and an infringement with the FIAP rules, the FIAP Patronage Service wrote two hours ago an E-mail to the organiser telling him that he is formally requested within 24 hours to add all the countries including Israel to the drop down country list or to delete this list completely from the online entry form.

In case of refusal, the FIAP Patronage will immediately withdrawn.

That was Friday.

As of today, the EPC website still does not allow Israelis to register and it still claims it is under FIAP patronage. And the president of FIAP, Mr. Emile Wanderscheid, has not responded to emails asking him to update what he is doing about this.

Wanderscheids's email is e.wanderscheid@fiap.net . He also uses wanefiap@pt.lu . His response emails were copied to Jacky MARTIN (j.martin@fiap.net), Riccardo BUSI (busi.fiap@gmail.com), and "Willy A. Suys" (suyswill@pt.lu).

The director of the competition, who has also ignored all emails, is Mr. Bader Al Nomani, bader.alnomani@gmail.com .

FIAP's Facebook page might be a nice place to raise the issue as well.

It is entirely possible that FIAP is doing everything possible and that the EPC is ignoring them. There is no mention of this competition on the FIAP website. Really, the only thing FIAP can do it to announce publicly that EPC is violating its rules and to publicly demand a response.

UPDATE: Mr. Wanderscheid was true to his word; the patronage for this contest was withdrawn:

And the EPC site is now lying about the patronage.

Thanks for those who wrote in.