A group of approximately fifty people staged a flash protest in downtown Cairo earlier this evening, chanting anti-government slogans and lighting fireworks as they made their way from Mohamed Mahmoud Street to Bab Al-Luq, where they quickly dispersed at the intersection of Hoda Sharawi and Sharafeen Street.
Timing and location were highly symbolic, as the protest took place two days before the anniversary of the Mohamed Mahmoud Street clashes of 2011, which killed 47 people and left hundreds injured, many with critical eye injuries.
Finding myself in the area, I followed tonight’s demonstration from beginning to end. The protestors appeared to be all very young—many of them in their teens. They chanted ash-shab yurid isqat an-nizam (the people want to bring down the regime), a slogan that first emerged during the Tunisian revolution and that quickly become one of the most popular mottos of the January 25 revolution in Egypt.
I also heard the demonstrators shout anti-Sisi slogans and noticed how several shopkeepers watched them contemptuously. One man said dismissively, “There they go, the Morsi supporters.” Another one said, “What are they shooting for?” referring to the loud bangs of the fireworks.
I tailed the small but boisterous crowd as it walked through Bab Al-Luq in the middle of the street, holding back traffic and setting off another salvo of fireworks. At this point, I began to maintain a certain distance, half expecting the authorities to appear at any moment and start arresting people. But before that happened, the protesters scrammed on their own.
It appeared to be a planned strategy, deliberately aimed at avoiding confrontation with security forces.
Indeed, in the current political climate protestors may have come to believe that small flash protests are a more effective means of expressing dissent than traditional demonstrations in large public squares.
Anti-harassment group to form Eid operation rooms. (AFP FILE PHOTO/KHALED DESOUKI)
The anti-harassment group I Saw Harassment (Shoft Tahrosh) announced Friday that operation rooms will be organised in Cairo and Kafr El-Sheikh during the upcoming Eid holiday to combat increased levels of harassment.
In a statement released Friday, just days before the end of the holy month of Ramadan and the Eid Al-Fitr holiday, the group said that Eid celebrations would be a real test to the decree issued by former interim president Adly Mansour which criminalises sexual harassment.
The operation rooms and patrols, entitled Warriors Against Harrassment, will be organised “to carry out awareness activities with the aim of eliminating sexual violence crimes and harassment of females in addition to monitoring, documenting and immediately intervening in cases of individual or mass harassment”, the statement read.
Last year, I Saw Harassment organised patrols in Talaat Harb street and Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo to intervene in instances of sexual harassment, which affect nearly 90% of women in the capital city.
I Saw Harassment said that 63% of their volunteers during Eid Al-Fitr in 2013 were women, with 20% of those involved having experienced sexual harassment themselves.
The group reported 65 cases of harassment during the four day holiday of Eid Al-Adha in October of 2013.
17 cases of harassment were reported during the Easter holiday in April. Three cases involved mob harassment.
Sexual assault sprang to the forefront of the national dialogue after a video of a woman being brutally beaten and stripped of her clothes went viral shortly after President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s inauguration.
The event, which transpired in Tahrir Square during celebrations after the election of the Field Marshal, left the woman hospitalised. Al-Sisi then visited the woman in the hospital and promised to crack down on sexual harassment.
The hospitalised woman was just one of six people sexually harassed during the Al-Sisi inauguration. Four of the women assaulted needed to be hospitalised for their injuries.
South Cairo Criminal Court has sentenced seven accused in sexual harassment cases to life imprisonment and two others to 20 years, state-owned Al-Ahram reported. The assailants were charged with kidnapping, indecent assault, physical torture, attempted rape and attempted murder.
Mostafa Mahmoud, lawyer at Nazra Feminist studies, said there were five cases of sexual assault presented in front of the Criminal Court, four of the five cases received verdicts on Wednesday.
Mahmoud added that some of the assailants were accused in more than one case of sexual assault.
A 42-year-old women and her daughter were sexually assaulted on 3 June in Tahrir Square, where supporters of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi had gathered to celebrate his election. A video taken of the assault went viral on the same night.
According to the prosecution the woman was stripped naked, scalded with boiling water with the assailants touching her.
Al-Sisi visited the victim in the hospital and apologised to her and “to all Egyptian women”, as reported on state television, saying that every “single case of assault is unacceptable”.
Mahmoud added that three cases of sexual assault were reported on 8 June, the day Al-Sisi was inaugurated. One of the cases goes back to 25 January 2013. The fifth case comprises the assault of the woman and her daughter on 3 June.
Mahmoud noted that the latter case is still on hold, but the verdict is expected to be issued in the coming 10 days.
The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women issued a report in April 2013 revealing that the majority of Egyptian women (99.3%) have experienced sexual harassment and 96.5% has been sexually assaulted.
Egyptian rights groups on Thursday presented the past year’s documented cases of torture. (Photo by AbdelHalim H. AbdAllah)
El Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture and the Association of Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) held a press conference on the International day in Support of Victims of Torture on 26 June, presenting documented cases of torture and human rights violations during the period from 30 June 2013 until 31 May 2014.
Psychiatrist Suzan Fayad from El Nadeem Center held Minister of Interior Mohamed Ibrahim accountable for the documented cases of torture and human rights violations that have been reported when he was in office, even since the rule of former president Mohamed Morsi.
“Although the Egyptian people called for peace and security on 30 June, Egyptian citizens still fall victim to the violence of state institutions,” said Fayad. She added that the demand for the restructuring for the interior ministry has gone unanswered since the Supreme Council of Armed Forces came in power after Hosny Mubarak had stepped down in February 2011.
Torture victim Karim Taha, who was recently released after a six months long detention, said: “If I had stayed there longer than this, I would have forgotten my humanity.” He called on activists and rights defenders to, “Salvage the [remaining] humanity of those imprisoned”.
Taha provided testimony about his torture and cases of torture that he had witnessed being performed against his inmates.
Taha was arrested along with Mohamed Sherif at a check point in Cairo’s Mohandessin neighborhood on the third anniversary of the 25 January Revolution for possession of stickers against military trials and the Protest Law. They were moved to different detention facilities and were assaulted repeatedly by their guards.
Taha, who is a member of 6 April Youth Movement, said that in his confinement he was able to make peace with his political rivals from Islamist factions. He added that he had witnessed “obvious torture marks and bruises”.
According to an official statement by the interior ministry, 1,079 “rioters” were arrested on 25 January 2014. Taha and Sherif were part of a group of 61 who were arrested at Dokki Police Station that day. The group was tried for a number of charges including “protesting without a permit, illegal assembly and damaging public and private property.”
El Nadim Center had reported 40 documented cases of torture in detention facilities and four cases of dead torture victims. A report prepared by the center included more cases that were mentioned in the media.
AFTE researchers present at the press conference meanwhile spoke on violations of media and academic freedoms spotted by the organisation.
Sarah El-Masry, media freedoms researcher at AFTE, described the period from 30 June 2013 until 31 May 2014 as “the most violent phase of media freedoms violations”.
El-Masry added that AFTE had documented during that period: 6 dead journalists killed on duty, 195 cases of physical violations against journalists, 14 cases of raids on media outlets, 68 cases of journalist confinement, along with 13 detained journalists, four of which have already been sentenced.
“Anyone with a camera or a cell phone in the street is in danger,” said El-Massry. She added that the Egyptian street is witnessing an unprecedented hostility towards journalists, especially women, who she pointed out also suffer from sexual harassment and violence.
Meanwhile, Mohamed Nagy, academic freedoms researcher at AFTE, discussed violations of academic freedoms, and described the past academic year as “the most violent in the history of Egyptian universities”.
Nagy said security forces broke into universities 42 times during the past year, resulting in clashes that left 16 students dead on campus. He added that at least 900 students have been arrested from the premises of their universities, some of which have already been sentenced.
Egypt witnessed a “black year for human rights” said Gamal Eid, Executive Manager of the Arabic Network of Human Rights Information, last December. Since Morsi’s military backed ouster on 3 July, rights groups have criticised the deteriorating human rights situation, with more than 40,000 arrested and at least 15,000 detained.
The International Day in Support of Torture Victims was designated by the United Nations General Assembly according to Denmark’s request, and was first publicly celebrated in 1998.
An Egyptian protester hold up his hand with a slogan reading in Arabic: “Egyptian girls are a red line” during a demonstration in Cairo against sexual harassment on February 2013. (AFP File Photo \ Khaled Desouki)
By Jihad Abaza
The first court hearing for 12 men suspected of sexual assault and harassment in Tahrir Square, during celebrations for President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s election and inauguration, started on Wednesday.
The defendants, appearing at Cairo Criminal Court, are charged with sexually assaulting, kidnapping, physically torturing, and attempting to rape and murder the female victims. Should the accused be convicted of the crimes, they may be sentenced to life in prison.
The charges related to five separate cases that allegedly took place on 3 June and 8 June, during large celebratory gatherings in Tahrir Square. These took place on the days presidential results were announced, and later when President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi was inaugurated.
“We hope that the attention the state is giving to sexual harassment cases is not just a temporary response to please public opinion,” said Mostafa Mahmoud, a lawyer working with the Nazra Center for Feminist Studies.
“There have always been cases of sexual assault that the state did not give any importance to,” he said, “This is not the first time sexual assault takes place in Tahrir, and we have spoken up about this before, but people thought we were exaggerating.”
On 14 June, the prosecutor general closed off investigations in the case and referred the 12 men to the urgent criminal court.
The judge has ordered the trial be held in secret for the defendants’ privacy, with lawyers demanding a precursory EGP 10,000 as temporary reparation for the victims, Mahmoud said.
However, Forensics Authority spokesman, Hisham Abdel Hameed, claimed that women were subjected to “indecent assault” and not rape on 8 June.
Shortly before Al-Sisi was declared president, former Interim President Adly Mansour approved a new law allowing for harsher legal punishments for sexual harassment.
The amended law is to make sexual harassment as a punishable crime which, depending on the degree of harassment, could result in six months to five years in prison. The harasser could also be fined between EGP 3,000 and EGP 50,000.
More recently, on 23 June, a Nasr City Court sentenced two men to two years in jail after they verbally harassed a woman in a mall. On the 22 June, a misdemeanour court issued a one year labour sentence and a fine of EGP 3,000 to a man for taking a picture of a woman sleeping in a public bus.
Egyptian protesters hold up placards and shout slogans during a demonstration in Cairo against sexual harassment on February 2013. (AFP FILE PHOTO / KHALED DESOUKI)
Twelve men will face trial on Wednesday for complicity in incidents of mass sexual assault reported in Tahrir Square on 25 January, 3 June and 8 June 2014.
Supporters of newly-elected President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi held demonstrations in Tahrir Square on the three aforementioned days to celebrate the third anniversary of the January 2011 revolution, Al-Sisi’s election as president and his inauguration, respectively.
The defendants, involved in five different court cases, will face trial in the South Cairo Criminal Court, reported state-run news agency MENA. They are charged with: kidnapping, indecent assault, physical torture, stealth, attempted rape and attempted murder. If the defendants are found guilty, they may be sentenced to life in prison.
Nationwide anger spiralled against reported cases of sexual assault in Tahrir Square after a video documenting one case went viral two weeks ago. The video shows a woman being subjected to mass assault after she is stripped naked, with security personnel trying to drive the assailants away.
The prosecutor general’s office said it interrogated three suspects for over 10 days for sexually assaulting a 42 year-old woman and her daughter in Tahrir Square on 3 June.
Last week, the prosecutor general referred 13 sexual assault suspects to the urgent criminal court.
The prosecution’s investigation into the assault cases revealed that “criminal groups” sexually assaulted six women on 8 June. Civil society organisations reported at least nine cases of sexual assault, while the Forensics Authority medically examined at least seven women subjected to “indecent assault” on 10 June.
Wednesday’s scheduled trial comes amid a string of legal measures taken in regards to sexual harassment and assault.
A misdemeanour court issued a swift verdict on Saturday, handing a one year labour sentence and an EGP 3,000 fine to a man captured last Wednesday while taking a photo of a sleeping woman on a public bus.
On Wednesday, another misdemeanour court sentenced two men charged with sexual harassment to six months labour.
The Heliopolis Misdemeanour Court is also trying two men accused of assaulting a policeman and harassing two women during celebrations of Al-Sisi’s inauguration on 8 June.
Mostafa Mahmoud, lawyer at women’s rights group Nazra for Feminist Studies, earlier said he believes the state’s attention to sexual harassment and assault cases will wane along with the media’s focus on such cases.
Mahmoud said that cases of mass sexual assault, similar to those reported from Tahrir Square during Al-Sisi’s inauguration, were reported during protests in the iconic square in November 2012. The aforementioned cases, however, are yet to be referred to court.
Shortly before ceding power, former President Adly Mansour issued a law amending articles in the Penal Code establishing harsher punishment for sexual harassment.
A report issued by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women in April 2013 revealed an overwhelming majority of Egyptian women have experienced sexual harassment; as many as 99.3% of women have reported incidents of sexual harassment, while 96.5% had been sexually assaulted.
Several hundred demonstrators gathered outside the Cairo Opera House Saturday to protest an increase in sexual harassment and assault on Egyptian streets (Photo by Elizabeth Stuart)
Screaming, yelling and swearing. “Leave her alone,” a police officer called as he pushed through the throngs of people in Tahrir Square last week, trying to get the naked, blood-covered girl away from the group of men who had stripped, beaten and raped her during a celebration of the new president’s inauguration. Desperately, he raised his gun to disperse crowds of people watching the attack.
Between November 2012 and January 2014, more than 250 women have been sexually assaulted at public protests or celebrations, while hordes of people stood by. Whether would-be rescuers are apathetic or fear being attacked themselves, experts say it’s common for victims in these situations, surrounded by people, to face the attack alone.
The context of harassment affects the bystanders’ responses, said Farah Shash, a psychologist at Al-Nadim Centre for Human Rights. Research suggests that people are less likely to intervene in an emergency if there are other bystanders, Shash said. The bigger the crowd, the less likely people are to intervene.
“People tell themselves someone else will intervene, but not me,” Shash said. Fears of armed attacks or random arrest push the bystanders to “save themselves the trouble.”
This could explain why people often don’t intervene during mob harassment or assaults at cinemas, parks and metro stations during national holidays, such as Eid or Sham Al-Nessim, she said. But last week’s mob assault was a special case.
“The attack was 100% organised,” she said. The victim was surrounded by two circles; an inner circle of attackers and an outer circle resisting any attempt to rescue her. “Some people said that if they were there, they would not have intervened because of their fear of being randomly arrested.”
In violent attacks like this, some bystanders join the attackers instead of intervening, said Noora Flinkmann, communications manager at Harassmap, a local nonprofit that is working to change social attitudes toward sexual harassment and assault in Egypt. Many “claim that they were helping”, but were actually just helping the situation to escalate.
“The attack wouldn’t have happened in the first place, if they were helping,” she said.
Flinkmann said mob assaults are “an extreme form” of a broader sexual harassment epidemic in Egypt.
Sexual harassment, which is sometimes referred to as ‘flirtation’ or mo’aksa, is so common in Egypt that it has almost become socially acceptable, she said. Ninety-nine percent of Egyptian women have experienced some form of sexual harassment, according to a 2014 study from the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. About 97% reported harassment in the form of touching.
“It is a kind of a social norm to not do anything about it,” she said.
She suggests that more people would intervene “even verbally” if there was “some form of social consequence” for harassment.
A few days before the incident happened in Tahrir, former president Adly Mansour issued a decree amending the penal code to officially name “sexual harassment” a crime punishable by up to five years of prison and/or a fine up top 50,000 Egyptian pounds. However, according to the United Nations, only 1.1% of women harassed report harrassment to the police.
This incident is the latest in a long list of mob sexual assaults in Egypt.
Nineteen women were sexually assaulted by a group of men on the second anniversary of 25 January revolution. In 2012, Yasmine El-Baramawy, a thirty year-old-musician, was pinned naked to the hood of a car and driven around Tahrir square while attackers took pictures of her and laughed. Journalist Nawal Ali was attacked on her way to an English class that was scheduled at the same time as an Anti-Mubarak protest in May 2005.
Twelve artefacts thought to have been smuggled to London following the 25 January Revolution are expected back in Egypt by the end of June, according to the Ministry of Antiquities.
In coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Antiquities secured an English court ruling in favour of the speedy return of the artefacts directly to Egypt. A ministry statement on Sunday said the return was occurring “without taking the routine procedures”.
Minister of Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim said the artefacts had been transferred to the Egyptian embassy in London. He added the ministry would not “give up” securing the return of Egyptian artefacts removed from the country illegally, to “preserve the right of Egypt in its heritage and artefacts”.
Ali Ahmed, director of the recovered antiquities department, said two were found on the websites of two London auction houses, Bonhams and Christies, and were set to go on sale. After examining the pieces their authenticity was confirmed, including one that had been registered in Luxor in 2000 by a team of German excavators. This particular item is an engraved red granite (22.8cm by 14.8cm) depicting a southern prisoner at the base of a statue of King Amenhotep III, according to the ministry.
Among other items recovered is the “head of a Cobra topped with a sun disk between the horns of a cow next to a lotus flower of coloured limestone dating to the era of the New Kingdom”. Also among the collection is “the bust of a man wearing a long wig” from the Middle Kingdom, the head of a limestone statue of a woman wearing a short wig from the New Kingdom and two limestone reliefs also from the New Kingdom era.
Ibrahim and the ministry have intensified efforts to prevent smuggling and the subsequent sale of artefacts abroad. Earlier this year the ministry launched efforts to establish a memorandum of understanding with the United States to restrict the import of Egyptian antiquities. A decision on the matter is yet to be announced.
In April the ministry foiled an attempt to smuggle Jewish antiquities used in religious practices from the northern port of Damietta, bound for Belgium.
Ninety ancient artefacts were recovered from a Jerusalem auction house in November after the ministry found 110 pieces advertised on the auctioneer’s website. The sellers were not able to produce ownership documents and Israeli authorities blocked the sale and ordered the return of 90 of the artefacts.
The Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square and other museums were looted during the January 2011 uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak.
Following the ouster of Mubarak’s successor, Mohamed Morsi, in July 2013 other museums were looted including the Mallawi Museum in Al-Minya. Many items are still unaccounted for.
A female protester holds a sign writing on it “We Need men from China” in a Demonstration against sexual harassment outside the Cairo Opera House in Gezira on 15 June 2014. (Photo by Aaron T.Rose/DNE)
A group of anti-harassment movements announced Sunday their presence in future gatherings in Tahrir Square to combat mass sexual assault, regardless of their agreement or disagreement with causes for demonstration.
Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment, Tahrir BodyGuards Movement, Imprint Movement and Against Harassment Movement announced during a press conference the formation of an anti-harassment union.
Nationwide anger spiralled at reported cases of sexual assault in Tahrir Square, after a video documenting one case of assault went viral last Sunday. The video shows a woman being subjected to mass assault after being stripped naked, with security personnel trying to drive the assailants away.
The prosecutor general’s office said it interrogated three suspects for sexually assaulting a 42 year-old woman and her daughter in Tahrir Square on 3 June. The assault took place as demonstrators gathered in Tahrir Square to celebrate Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s official confirmation as president.
The newly founded union promised to do their utmost to prevent further cases of sexual assault. It is to set to be active starting 30 June, when demonstrations are scheduled to commemorate last year’s mass protests which led to the military ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi.
The union stressed that securing Tahrir Square is the responsibility of security forces, calling on the Ministry of Interior to “create the necessary conditions” for them during their presence. The groups stated that they were absent from previous demonstrations in the square due to the presence of security forces, whom they believed would be capable of preventing mass sexual assault.
The prosecution’s investigation into the assault cases revealed that “criminal groups” sexually assaulted six women on 8 June, as demonstrators flocked to the iconic Square to celebrate Al-Sisi’s inauguration. Civil society organisations reported at least nine cases of sexual assault, while the forensics authority medically examined last Tuesday at least seven women subjected to “indecent assault”.
Mozn Hassan, Executive Director of Nazrah for Feminist Studies, said that last week’s reported cases of sexual assault are not the first of their kind. She added that a development in the pattern of sexual violence against women could be noticed throughout the past two years.
Sexual assault amid large political demonstrations has become a recurring incident since the mob sexual assault CBS reporter Lara Logan faced on 11 February 2011. Logan’s assault occurred as Egyptians were celebrating the overthrow of former president Hosni Mubarak in Tahrir Square.
Salma Al-Tarzy, from Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment, said the state and media’s handling of the issue of sexual violence as “individual” cases contributed to the proliferation of the phenomenon.
“It is sad that we have been saying that [mass sexual assault is a recurring incident] for two years and yet the state is negligently handling the matter,” Al-Tarzy said. She noted that the number of police forces securing the 3 and 8 June demonstrations, when cases of mass sexual assault were reported, was notably low.
Al-Tarzy also blamed state institutions for hindering the process of saving sexual assault survivors. She claimed that military police has attempted to conduct a virginity test on an assault survivor at least once.
Al-Tarzy added that should the survivor be admitted to a public hospital, she will not be medically examined until the Forensics Authority arrives, usually not before 6am, regardless of the patient’s condition. In most cases, incidents of mass sexual assault occur at night.
The Ministry of Interior said last Monday that it had arrested seven men in light of sexual harassment reports. Security forces arrested an eighth suspect accused of sexually harassing a woman in Tahrir Square last Sunday, reported state-run Al-Ahram.
The interior ministry expressed plans to assemble an “integrated security team” that would focus on curbing sexual harassment and assault. It added that it would increase the number of personnel working in its human rights division in coordination with the National Council for Women.
Magda Adly, head of Al-Nadeem Centre for Management and Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, cast doubt on the Ministry of Interior’s seriousness in combatting sexual violence against women.
In order to fight sexual harassment and assault, Adly said the interior ministry should be restructured and all old cases of assault, dating back to Mubarak’s era, should be investigated.
During a visit to a victim of sexual assault in hospital, Al-Sisi vowed that “as a state, we will not allow for this to happen again”. He added that “firm” measures will be adopted to face this phenomenon.
Al-Sisi apologised to the sexual assault victim and to “all Egyptian women” on state television, saying that “even a single case of assault is unacceptable.”
Adly said that the president should apologise for all previous cases of sexual assault on behalf of the state.
Sexual violence in Tahrir Square drew international ire from countries including the United States and France, the latter calling it “despicable”. Commitments by the Egyptian government to bring the perpetrators to justice were welcomed.
A report issued by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women in April 2013 revealed 99.3% of Egyptian women have experienced some sort of sexual harassment. The report also added that 96.5% of women had been sexually assaulted.
You don’t need to read the United Nations report saying 99.3% of Egyptian women have been sexually harassed (and worse) to know how serious of a problem the issue is in Egypt. Half of Egyptian society is under constant threat in the public space — studies, reported cases, and anecdotes all make this very clear.
Despite the regular occurrence of sexual harassment and assault, one especially horrifying incident in Tahrir Square seized the attention of the public and government officials last week.
Egyptian government body the National Council for Women (NCW) strongly condemned the incident, calling on strong enforcement of the law to take all necessary measures “to address the phenomenon of sexual harassment which is alien to Egyptian society”.
Similarly, the presidency released a statement on the issue describing sexual harassment as “an alien behaviour to Egyptian culture”.
When half of society is constantly subjected to harassment, and has been for some time now, it’s time to acknowledge that sexual harassment is not alien to Egyptian society. In describing it as some sort of phenomenon that is foreign to Egypt and something that society doesn’t struggle with on a daily basis, we both distract from our collective guilt and fundamentally change the way we deal with the problem.
Last summer, four Shi’a were lynched in a Giza village in an incident that was widely and strongly decried. At the time the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi’s presidency, and others also described the incident and sectarianism in general as some sort of phenomenon foreign to Egypt, the same way they did when violence in Dahshour in 2012 culminated in the expulsion of over 100 Christian families or when security forces attacked Saint Mark’s Cathedral in April 2013.
The similarities don’t stop there, though. In a highly polarised political environment, many have sought to settle political scores and scapegoat opponents for problems that go beyond politics.
In the same NCW statement the group said it intended to file a lawsuit against Al-Jazeera for the “defamation of Egyptian women” and said that investigations would “reveal the true intentions of the perpetrators” — an insinuation that the body believed that the assault had roots in political motives. Secretary-General of the Arab Women’s Union Hoda Badran blamed sexual harassment and assault in Tahrir Square on the Muslim Brotherhood.
“Such shameful and unethical behaviour cannot stem from the honourable Egyptians who revolted in January 2011 and on 30 June last year,” said the NCW in another statement, even going as far as to say: “Egypt was packed with millions [of protesters] for days without witnessing a single case of sexual harassment,” a patently untrue statement, especially when independent groups documented some of the worst sexual violence during protests from 30 June to 3 July.
On the other hand, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party’s news portal said the rape and assault in Tahrir Square last week “reflects the moral absence and decadence that links the leader of the coup to his supporters,” another attempt to put political spin on a problem that existed years leading up to Mohamed Morsi’s ouster.
Many have supported the notion that sectarianism is alien to Egyptian society, often blaming “foreign hands” for attempting to “ignite strife”. In 2012 when Christians were threatened in the Egyptian border town of Rafah and were forced to leave, residents of the town blamed Israeli intelligence service Mossad for playing a role in the incident.
Attempting to make claims that the root of the problem exists in politics is another way of denying that such a problem requires we take a deep look at society itself, reducing sexual harassment and assault to a political problem. Whether or not this can be proven in the context of protests and demonstrations, women’s experiences on a daily basis walking on Cairo’s streets shows that the problem goes much deeper.
First and foremost, we must observe the actions of the government when dealing with these deep societal ills, and there are some reasons to be hopeful in how the government has gone about dealing with last week’s abhorrent incident. A commission put together by the government seems to recognise that preventive measures that include education and awareness are an integral part of combatting the issue, which also requires adequate implementation of the law.
Treating each individual case in a vacuum under the “this is alien to Egyptian society” rhetoric allows authorities to treat each as a single criminal case, but overlooks the patterns, deep driving forces, and prospect of future similar cases. Forcing some of Egypt’s crises into a political context ignore the gravity, and enable people to selectively highlight occurrences. Some who have drawn attention to last week’s brutal assault may not be as ready to discuss alleged sexual abuse in police detention, while others may be willing to unfairly reduce Egypt’s sectarian issues to something that is only caused by the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamists. Political context is helpful, but it also has been abused to push narratives seeking to defame political foes.
But when problems are so embedded in our society, it is important we all acknowledge, as tough as it might be, that they represent an ugly side of Egypt that we all live with. Only then will we be able to take serious steps to solving problems that we hope one day are truly alien to Egyptian society.
Basil El-Dabh is the Politics Editor at Daily News Egypt. You can email him at [email protected]and follow him on Twitter at @BasilDabh.
