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More sexual assaults at Tahrir Square in Egypt

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Trigger Warning – descriptions of sexual assaults

When I hopped on twitter this morning and checked the thread #EndSH, I was appalled to read that more sexual assaults took place last night against women at Tahrir Square in Egypt as they marked the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 25 revolution of 2011.

When will the assaults on women protesting and covering stories at Tahrir end?!

I clicked on a link to read about what happened. Here is part of an article I read on Bikya Masr. I am outraged:

“CAIRO: Heather still doesn’t know how she made it home on Wednesday night after being in Egypt’s Tahrir Square. The Arab-American arrived back at her Cairo flat without pants, having had them torn off downtown. She and her two roommates were victims of a mob attack by people in the iconic square on Wednesday, as protesters demonstrated against the military junta.

According to Heather, an Arab-American living in the Egyptian capital, she and her Swedish and Spanish roommates took to Tahrir as thousands were converging there to mark one-year since the ousting of former President Hosni Mubarak.

“They started fighting over who was going to do what,” Heather told Bikyamasr.com in an exclusive interview. She came forward after seeing the report on a foreign woman who was stripped naked and assaulted only hours after her own incident.

“My roommates and I fell to the ground when they attacked us. The people pulled our pants off even as we yelled and tried to fight,” she continued.

The incident occurred around 7:30 PM local time, just as night was taking hold of the city. Heather said the attack happened “in the center of Tahrir.”

She said that after the men pulled their pants off, they continued to grab and grobe the women’s bodies. “It is disgusting. They put fingers up my ass,” she revealed.

Luckily, the women were somehow pulled from the violence by a man and a woman and taken to safety. She said she doesn’t recall exactly how she was saved from the violent attack.

“I was shaking and crying and the man and woman just grabbed us and pulled us out and took us out of the square.”

Later in the night, the issue of sexual violence toward women was sparked after an eyewitness reported on the micro-blogging site Twitter that a foreign woman was stripped, groped and assaulted by another mob of men in the square.

The woman, who’s identity has not been revealed, was taken away in an ambulance after being assaulted for 10 minutes. Her husband reportedly was unable to intervene and witnessed the incident.

“I saw the woman and then dozens of men surrounded her and started grabbing her, when she screamed for help some people came, but they were hit in the face,” wrote one witness.

What happened next was “appalling,” said the trusted witness, who asked for anonymity. “The men just started tearing at her clothes and grabbing her body all over. When she fought back, they pushed her. It was chaos.”

There were unconfirmed reports that the men “violated” her with their hands.

The nationality of the woman is unknown at the current time.

Throughout the day, sexual harassment towards women has been increasing and more and more reports of women being grabbed and groped began being reported.

Activists called the attacks on women completely “unacceptable” and must be exposed no matter what. They demanded an end to all violence toward women.

“What happened in Tahrir today has no justification and must be fully exposed even if it taints Tahrir!” wrote EgyptSecularist on Twitter.

Heather said that she came forward to talk about what happened to her “because people need to know what goes on. It is the only way to start making it a problem that will have to be dealt with.”

However, many people told her to not reveal what happened to her because she was told, “it would hurt the image of the revolution.” But Heather said after seeing the reports of others and their assaults, “I felt it was right to say something.”

The incident brings memories of reporter Lara Logan, who was sexually assaulted the night former President Hosni Mubarak gave up power.

A mob of men ripped the 40-year-old correspondent away from her crew and bodyguard, tearing at her clothes and beating her in broad daylight….

Instances of sexual assaults on female journalists covering the events in Tahrir Square have continued in the year since Mubarak’s ouster.

According to studies conducted by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Right (ECWR) in 2008, 98 percent of foreign women and 83 percent of Egyptian women surveyed had experienced sexual harassment in Egypt.

Meanwhile, 62 percent of Egyptian men confessed to harassing women and 53 percent of Egyptian men faulted women for “bringing it on.”

What can we do? Help support HarassMap, one of the groups in Egypt working to combat the culture of harassment and assault on women in public places.

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I’m an Egyptian Girl

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Two new films about street harassment in one day! The first one was from Pakistan, here is one from Egypt:

From the filmmaker: “A short movie that we worked on against sexual harassment and verbal abuse. We just wanted to reach out to all the women and young girls who ever got harassed and hopefully this short movie makes a difference. We only hope for a better environment and safer surroundings.”

Readers in Egypt: share your street harassment stories at HarassMap.

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“Systematic sexual violence against women in Egypt”

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12/20/11 update, from the New York Times:

“Thousands of woman marched through downtown Cairo on Tuesday evening to call for the end of military rule in an extraordinary expression of anger over images of soldiers beating, stripping and kicking a female demonstrator on the pavement of Tahrir Square….

The event may have been the biggest women’s demonstration in Egypt’s history, and the most significant since a 1919 march led by pioneering Egyptian feminist Huda Shaarawi to protest British rule. The scale was stunning, and utterly unexpected in this strictly patriarchal society. Previous attempts to organize women’s events in Tahrir Square this year have either fizzled or, in at least one case, ended in the physical harassment of the handful of women who did turn out.”

Marvelous.

Image via Al-Jazeera

Visit the website HarassMap or follow the hashtag #EndSH on Twitter and you’ll find documentation of street harassment and sexual assault in Cairo, including Tahrir Square.

Journalist Mona Eltahawy is outspoken about this atrocity, and last month she brought attention to the sexual assault she and other female journalists experienced while covering protests at Tahrir Square.

Today on CNN, Eltahawy spoke about the brutality of the Egyptian military against protesters. She brought attention to the treatment of women in particular (especially the woman dubbed “Blue Bra Girl“):

“…I hope she survived…I hope she is able to recover… I cannot even begin to imagine what she went through…what this woman went through is incredible on so many levels. I salute her first of all for her courage in being there. And second of all, I think what she does, and especially this picture you are seeing right now, is it exposes once and for all and kills any denial about the Egyptian regime whether it was under Mubarak and now under the military and the use of systematic sexual violence against women in Egypt. It is a shame, it has been denied for too long and we must expose it at every level. And unfortunately, her tragic case has allowed us to do that very publicly…”

As many others have said before, there can be no true revolution until the sexual harassment and violence against women ends.

Update: Eltahawy just spoke to the BBC, too.

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Do We Know How to Handle Sexual Harassment?

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Photo Credit: Amr Nabil/AP/File

This male ally post is cross-posted from Rebel with a Cause Bog.

News came out yesterday about a draft law that has been proposed by the government issuing harsher punishments for those who commit sexual harassment and rape crimes, up to the point of death sentence.

The new law tackles various points: adding telephone and the internet to different media through which harassment can occur; and giving more conditions when rape convicts get harsher punishments such as reconsidering victim’s age and cases where the victim has been raped by more than one convicts.

This is a reminder of a similar law which just passed a few days ago for combating thuggery. The news of that law was alarming to me as well as many other human rights activists. The move towards stricter law for thuggery was met with a lot of criticism. Just before this particular law was passed, the military forces cracked down on Tahrir protesters, many were detained and tortured. These protesters were claimed to be thugs which puts us at a dilemma of how to determine who’s a thug and who’s a protester, especially because we are at a time where military courts (where people do not enjoy their full rights of fair trial) have been handling these cases.

Back to sexual harassment, it is quite obvious there’s a problem with the way we’re dealing with this issue. The phenomenon which began surfacing rather recently in Egypt is rampant. But is issuing stricter punishments the solution for this multifaceted problem? Here’s why I don’t think so:

I find the process highly questionable. The ministerial council pushes for more punishments for sexual harassment and the supreme military council is happy to enforce these, because this is the language the military best understands. In normal circumstances the ministerial council can propose draft laws and submit them to the parliament to discuss them further. Either way there need to be more public debate about it.

Drafting laws without counseling civil society bodies or human rights experts is pretty concerning. These laws have to be compatible with human rights law, and there need to be clear definition and good consensus on what sexual assault entails.

I am more concerned with how to enforce this law, rather than the punishments themselves. There are big question marks on how to get these cases reported? We have a culture of silence about these crimes. It’s hard for people to report them because a huge stigma can be placed upon them. Most women who face sexual harassment or even rape never report it to the police or even to their families because their lives can be devastated.

We have this culture of intimidating criminals by increasing punishments. I don’t really believe it works. To be able to overcome a societal problem, we need to handle its underlying causes. All those handling those crimes need to be sensitized about it and fully aware of its implications. By engaging different people in the process of ending the phenomenon of sexual harassment, real achievement can happen on that front.

– Ahmed Awadalla, Cairo, Egypt

This post is part of the weekly blog series by male allies. We need men involved in the work to end the social acceptability of street harassment and to stop the practice, period. If you’d like to contribute to this weekly series, please contact me.

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“More rights for women, Egypt for all Egyptians”

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Yesterday in Egypt, activists called for a Million Woman March in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, demanding “fair and equal opportunity for all Egyptian citizens — beyond gender, religion or class.”

I wrote about the planned March with optimism, just as the organizers and participants felt optimism. This morning, reading about what happened makes me feel tired. Tired knowing how much longer Egyptian women (and women all over the world) will have to keep working toward equal rights, including the rights to public spaces free from harassment or assault, in the face of such hateful opposition.

Via NPR:

“Hundreds of women — some in headscarves and flowing robes, others in jeans — who marched to the square to celebrate the anniversary, demand equality and an end to sexual harassment were soon outnumbered by men who chased them out.

“They said that our role was to stay home and raise presidents, not to run for president,” said Farida Helmy, a 24-year-old journalist.”

Via CNN.com:

“The turnout appeared to be no more than than 1,000, and the event quickly degenerated into shouting matches between the two sides.

“Men are men and women are women and that will never change and go home, that’s where you belong,” some of the anti-feminist demonstrators chanted.

There were men on both sides of the protest.

Organizers calling for the demonstration said on Facebook they were “not after minority rights. We are not after symbolic political representation.”

On Aljazeera, Fatma Naib shared her experiences and pictures from being on the square:

“I arrived in Tahrir around 2pm local time [12GMT] on Tuesday March 8, but was surprised to see the sheer volume of men who outnumbered the women, as if it was International Men’s Day!…

Many Egyptian and non-Egyptian men came in big numbers in support of the rally.

And a group of French and Italian expats also turned up in solidarity with the women of Egypt.

“We came here to show solidarity and support women’s rights in the world wherever they are. In Tahrir even more because women played a huge role in the revolution like the men,” Rafaela from Italy said….

Women of all ilk, young, old, veiled, unveiled, all decked up at the Tahrir Square. As they stood there peacefully with their signs that read: “more rights for women”, “Egypt for all Egyptians”, a small crowd of men started to gather in front of the women’s rally.

The anti-women’s day crowd grew as did their loud chants that said:”al shab yoreed esqat al madam“, “the people demand the removal of the lady/women”.

Some of them directed their aggression towards the men who were supporting the women; others just chanted ‘illegitimate’ while pointing at the pro-women crowd….

As the anti-women day crowd grew, the atmosphere went from celebratory to hostile. Most of the men and some of the women, that joined them later, had a problem with one of the demands that called for a woman to become a president….

It was a sad moment to see how a day that was meant to celebrate women all over the world end like this. It was particularly sad to see the faces of some of the women that were visibly shocked at the response and behaviour of the anti-women day protesters.

The event organiser was shocked at the incident.

She said, “I am shocked, I didn’t expect this to happen. But these guys are unaware of our plight and it will take time before the awareness is spread.”

For now the wheel of discussion and creating awareness about women issues and their democratic demands have started, but for now, the idea of a woman president seems unlikely… at least for now…”

Photo by Fatma Naib

“Rebel,” an Egyptian man who attended the rally to support the women, shared what happened on his blog, ending with:

“I was called a faggot defending whores. I was told I wasn’t Egyptian for doing this.

So now. Some accuse us of being too controversial. Some accuse us of using the wrong time and place to voice our grievances. Until when would we remain silent? And till when we will be too shy to call for women rights? I am not sorry I called for justice. I am just really appalled but what my friends had to go through. We managed to get our voices heard for once, and it won’t be the last time.

I hope what happened today will shed some light on the unacceptable attitudes towards women. More men need to speak out for women too. This will definitely help our cause.

The battle is hard. Mubarak’s regime and authoritarianism destroyed people’s sense of diversity. It may take years to actually change attitudes. I think we are up for it though.”

What happened is very disheartening ,but I know that those who support women’s rights won’t give up!

Do Something: This coming Saturday, HarassMap and The New Woman Foundation are hosting a discussion about women’s rights and ending sexual harassment in the streets. Saturday, March 12th, at 1:00 pm, at 14 abdel monem sanad st, off Ahmed Orabi, Mohandessin, Giza.

And on March 20, it’s International Anti-Street Harassment Day. Harassment in the streets is a global problem – people all over the world will speak out and question its social acceptability.

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