Via GlobalVoices: April 18 has been marked as an anti-harassment day in Egypt with a call for Egyptian women to be able to move around safely in their own country.
What’s sparked this protest is the acquittal of blogger Asser Yasser‘s street harassers. I hadn’t heard about her case before and I have had a hard time finding anything about it or her in English (and google translate really hasn’t been useful). I finally found a blog post from February which told how the female residents of Asser’s household were street harassed by their new home in the Mokattam area and when Asser was too, she filed a formal report.
“On her way home, some teenagers in parked cars that reeked of hash used cuss words, followed her, tried to grab her, encircled her with their vehicles, and the poor woman and her niece felt trapped. People looked from their balconies and no one lifted a finger to help her. She called the police from her mobile phone as she stood there in utter terror and shortly after officer Mohab came to her rescue. He was almost run down by the fleeing cars.”
I can’t find any other info until the GlobalVoices entry that says the harassers were recently acquitted.
Please post in the comments if you know more about this case and/or what all will be happening on April 18 in protest.
There’s also a Facebook campaign about it, though it’s all in Arabic.
administrator says
The one news source I could find in English about the event yesterday (http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=207779) called it a fiasco because the timing of the event wasn’t clear and the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights, which has spearheaded the anti-sexual harassment/street harassment campaign, did not support the event.
“Meanwhile, the President of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, Nihad Aboul Qamsan, refused to participate in the protest although she adopted the campaign for safer streets for all.
She stressed that this stand was a form of criticism of a judicial ruling which had acquitted a person accused of harassing a person called Asir Yasser.
Ms. Nihad said she objected to responding to a judicial ruling through a protest. She also said the organizers of the protest used a slogan of her center (“I won’t give up my right”) to face harassment without asking for the Center’s permission. This caused problems between the Center itself and security forces.”