As more women come forward with stories about the sexual violence they’ve survived while trying to protest at Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, we’ve learned that their assailants often use a disturbing strategy.
“Many of the sexual attacks on women during protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square are organized with as many as 300 men participating, activists say.
Activists describe a tactic that has become known as the “circle of hell,” Ahram Online reports. They say the men form two long lines and move through the crowds in the square.
Once the groups find one or two women alone they form a circle around them, trapping them.
Masa Amir, a researcher at Nazra for Feminist Studies, said the attackers continue to work together.
“One takes her shoes off, another pulls her trousers off, then someone else takes her phone and watch,” she said.
Engy Ghozlan, the founder of Harassmap, said women sometimes find themselves surrounded with some men trying to help them and others to rape them: “The woman is confused and doesn’t know who to trust.”
And street harassment and sexual violence is not just localized to Tahrir Square. Women all over the city feel unsafe going places alone. In response, there have been many protests, rallies, and actions to try to make public places safer for women.
“Egypt has tolerated a culture of misogyny for many generations. In the past year, however, there has been a change in mood. Women from all walks of life are afraid to go out in the street at all, whether they’re marching to bring down the government or popping to the shop for a pint of milk. Even Tahrir Square, the symbolic political heart of the nation, has become all but impassable to any woman without a hefty male escort.
One of the groups fighting back is Op – AntiSH – pronounced “Oppantish” and standing for Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment – volunteers, some of them men and many of them women who have been raped and assaulted. OpAntiSH physically stops assaults in Tahrir Square and the surrounding areas, using Tasers, spray paint, fists, force, sticks, anything they can put their hands on to protect women from “mob attacks”. They divide into task-teams with specific jobs: some to summon rescuers to the scene of an assault, some to grab the victim and take her to safety, some to distribute the contents of emergency packs containing spare clothes, water and blankets. It’s all down to them, because the police are far more concerned with attacking protesters than protecting women.
In a flat above Tahrir Square after Friday prayers, activists with OpAntiSH organise into teams to head down to the protest lines. “The significant shift is in how women see the issue,” says Reem Labib, an OpAntiSH member. “We’ve been violated and we will not be silenced. I’ve never seen it like this before. There’s always been this barrier of shame and fear.”
“We believe that a big part of this mob is organised – sexual assault has always been one of the means used by the state to intimidate women. But even so, it’s still relying on the deeper problem in society,” says Tarsi, an OpAntiSH spokesperson whose flat we are in. She makes tea for the shell-shocked women and men pulling on team T-shirts to go out and risk their lives again in the square whose name means freedom. These seven friends, students and charity workers in jeans are fighting a real war – a war for the soul of their revolution, as well as for the lives of women in the streets of Cairo.”
The volunteers of OpAntiSH are heroes. It’s a shame their work is needed at all, but clearly, it very much IS needed!! Bravo to them and everyone else who is taking a stand, speaking out, and trying to create a world where there are no more circles of hell.
