Sexual assault is still being used by the state as a weapon against the people, said the El Nadim Centre for the Management and Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture in a press release on Monday.
“The faces have changed, but the system is the same: oppressive, authoritarian, dictatorial, and basing its survival on a security structure of brutality that knows no limits,” the release stated.
Standard torture, which includes beatings, hangings from extremities, and the use of electricity, differs from sexual torture; sexual assault encompasses rape, the forceful penetration of the anus or vagina in any way, and non-consensual touching of the genitals.
The goal of sexual torture, instead of a confession or information, is to “humiliate, terrorize and silence voices of dissent,” said the press release. The Centre said that this sort of oppression has not only occurred inside prisons and police cells, but even inside the High Court, citing the case of Ahmed Taha, who was taken and raped inside the building.
“While the Muslim Brotherhood pays lip-service to religious notions of morality,” the press release said, “they are in fact continuing the legacy of the systematic use of torture as a weapon of the Egyptian state, much like the military junta.”
The release added, “organized sexual torture continues to be used by the state as a weapon against its opponents,” referring to the case of Emad El-Kabir under former president Hosni Mubarak, virginity tests that occurred under SCAF, and the organized sexual assault that Yasmine El Baramawy suffered when a large mob of men surrounded her on the street and started slashing her trousers with knives.
According to an article written by psychologist Leanh Nguyen published in the American Journal of Psychoanalysis the effects of sexual violence are deep and varied, ranging from a deep fear of people, acute shame, a sense of meaninglessness, to an inability to form personal relationships, a loss of any sense of hope, etc
El Nadim Centre has launched a new media campaign against sexual torture by releasing a video made in cooperation with the Mosireen Media Cooperative. The video contains testimonies that tell stories of those who have endured sexual torture, virginity tests, and organized sexual assault on the street. The video is El Nadim Centre’s expression of solidarity with the survivors of the systematic sexual torture. The name of the video is “Sexual Torture Under Mubarak, SCAF, MB.”
