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| Egypt’s regimes may change, but not the plight of women protestors | | | Egypt: The rape of a female Dutch journalist in Tahrir Square last week was déjà vu of the worst kind. A year after the brutal rape of Lara Logan, a CBS journalist, in Tahrir Square by over a hundred men made news, violence against women in the streets of Egypt is again part and parcel of the narrative of public protest in Egypt.
Gang rape, sexual assault and threats of violence are a daily occurrence in the country’s rallies and protests. Since last Friday, over a 101 cases of sexual assault have been reported, some of which have required surgery and hospitalisation. Mobs of men have routinely attacked women, stripping them naked, raping, assaulting and attacking them with weapons, and in some cases even filming the attacks.
Can the violence against women in Egypt be put down to simple mob mentality? According to political commentators in the region, it goes deeper than that. One reason is that attackers risk almost no chance of being convicted for their crimes. Very few of these cases have been reported because the hope of the crime being prosecuted is almost non-existent. Officials have instead told women protesters to stay home instead of attempting to get involved in the political process of decision-making. Large swathes of the public areas where protesters assemble have been declared as unsafe for women.
One of the reasons is also the lack of police presence in the protest areas, as cited in a Human Rights Watch report on sexual violence in Egypt. The police stays away to avoid clashes with protesters, according to the report. The approach of the Egyptian government has been to downplay the severity of the issue, as well as focus on legislative reform alone, which are months in the making.
In 2011, when Hosni Mubarak was being overthrown, the Muslim Brotherhood took the opportunity to align the dictator with undesirable “Western ideals”, which included feminism. When the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women issued a report that called for allowing women full equality (in marriage, reproduction, and family finances), the Muslim Brotherhood rejected the report saying that if implemented, it would “lead to the disintegration of society and destroy the family.”
Forty three NGO workers were charged as guilty for their involvement in the pro-democracy movement over the past couple of months. This came a year after raids were carried out in NGO offices in December 2011, many of which were involved in women’s rights. With this move, the one route to justice for victims of rape and assault went out the window. Vigilante groups such as Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment have been established – this group alone recorded 46 cases of sexual assault on Sunday night alone.
Female journalists, such as the Dutch journalist, also make for easy targets in order to get a “message across”, as Nina Burleigh, an investigative journalist in the Middle East points out. “Raping foreign journalists – guaranteed to attract global attention – is merely a more efficient way of getting the message across to women,” says Burleigh. “Stay home. Your input in government and politics is not wanted.”
A 2008 survey by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights found that 83% of Egyptian women have been sexually assaulted in their lives. According to an article in Wall Street Journal, human rights workers have alleged that the violence is organised with the aim of sending a message to “Egypt’s fathers and brothers to keep their women at home.” “This is sexual terrorism,” said Fathi Said, a coordinator for one of the anti-sexual harassment campaigns in Cairo to the WSJ.
But women are, for the most part, still coming out on the streets. According to the Wall Street Journal report, hundreds of thousands of women turned out on Monday, chanting “Erhal” for Morsi, which means “Leave.”
Besides this, according to Dalia Ziada, the executive director of Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies, women outnumbered men during many parts of the day because men had to go to work in the morning. |
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