{"id":8522,"date":"2013-08-17T17:41:08","date_gmt":"2013-08-17T17:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/disnaija.com\/nigerian-newspapers\/egypts-sexual-assault-epidemic\/"},"modified":"2013-08-17T17:41:08","modified_gmt":"2013-08-17T17:41:08","slug":"egypts-sexual-assault-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/disnaija.com\/egypts-sexual-assault-epidemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Egypt\u2019s sexual assault epidemic"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Women at Egypt\u2019s protests often must fight more than the political cause that brought them into the streets.<\/p>\n

It is the night of July 3, and on the streets of downtown Cairo thousands are celebrating the ousting of Egypt\u2019s deposed president, Mohamed Morsi. But below ground, in the police booth of Tahrir Square\u2019s metro station, Joanna Joseph is attempting to comfort a young girl.<\/p>\n

She had been surrounded by dozens of men in the square, stripped and sexually assaulted. And now, on the request of her family, a medic is trying to conduct a virginity test on the floor of the police booth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was shouting at the doctor not to touch the girl. The girl couldn\u2019t even cope with hearing the crowds,\u201d says Joseph, who is a volunteer with the Anti-Sexual Harassment Campaign (OpAntiSh), a grassroots organisation set up in November 2012, which sends teams of volunteers to protests to intervene in mob assaults. \u201cThe policeman said he had received four or five girls in this state every day,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

Since the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak, then the Egyptian president, attacks like these have become an epidemic in Tahrir Square, the site of many of the protests. And in the week surrounding the ousting of Morsi, 150 such cases were reported. Many others, of course, go unreported. The level of violence involved is often extreme – in January, two teenage girls were raped with knives.<\/p>\n

Thirty-year-old musician Yasmine el-Baramawy, who was attacked in Tahrir Square last November, describes the pattern: Men surround the woman, rip off her clothes and then perform manual rape, while an outer circle fends off anyone who might try to help her with sticks, blades and belts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were taking photos of me and laughing,\u201d Baramawy says. \u201cThey pinned me naked to the hood of a car and drove me around.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Vocalising sexual harassment in Egypt<\/b><\/p>\n

Deep roots<\/b><\/p>\n

The speed, efficiency and ferocity of the attacks imply that they are orchestrated, and many believe they are used by political factions as a tool to deter women from protesting while simultaneously discrediting demonstrators. But the fact that the assaults occurred under Mubarak, the military, Morsi and the current interim president, Adly Mansour, suggest the problem may have far deeper roots.<\/p>\n

And while the attacks are most prevalent and brutal in Tahrir, they also occur outside of a political context: In May, rights groups reported similar assaults at a pop concert in the coastal city of Ain Sokhna.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem of sexual harassment and assault has been evident for a very long time,\u201d says Amal Elmohandes, the director of the Women Human Rights Defenders programme. \u201cThey took place as far back as 2006 during Eid celebrations, at the metro stations or near the cinemas.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, a study by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women released in April reported that 99.3 percent of Egyptian women have experienced some form of sexual harassment, while 96.5 percent have been subject to harassment in the form of touching.<\/p>\n

But activists say the number of sexual assaults has increased post-revolution as there has been a surge in the number of women present in public spaces. Furthermore, Elmohandes says, \u201cas society is more brutalised, people are increasingly expressing themselves through violent actions\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u2018Blaming the victim\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n

Increased opportunity and a traumatised population, however, does not fully explain the extent of the problem in Egypt. And the language used to describe the assaults reveals just how deeply embedded the problem is.<\/p>\n

The word \u201ctaharush\u201d, which means \u201charassment\u201d, was only adopted in the context of sexual assault in the last decade. \u201cInstead, people used to say \u2018flirtation\u2019 [\u2018mo\u2019aksa\u2019] – they sugar-coated the problem,\u201d explains Mariam Kirollos, a women\u2019s rights activist and volunteer with OpAntiSh.<\/p>\n

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The use of the term \u201cflirtation\u201d rather than harassment implies a consensual act, and contributes to an already entrenched culture of \u201cblaming the victim\u201d, as women are perceived to be somehow complicit.<\/p>\n

Consequently, answering back is widely considered inappropriate in Egypt – and can, in some instances, provoke a violent reaction. When, in 2012, 16-year-old Eman Mostafa spat at the man who groped her breasts, her attacker shot her dead.<\/p>\n

The roots of the problem, women\u2019s rights activists say, are in the home. And with domestic violence and marital rape not considered crimes under Egyptian law, it is hard to change attitudes on the street.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s rights groups had worked on legislation to criminalise domestic abuse, but this was shelved when Mubarak\u2019s parliament was dissolved post-revolution. Since then there have been two further attempts. El-Nadeem Centre for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, an Egyptian NGO that offers legal and psychological support to victims of assault, drafted a law addressing domestic violence, marital rape and sexual violence against women. But the effort was abandoned when the parliament was again dissolved by the then-ruling military council last year.<\/p>\n

Similar umbrella legislation put forward by the state-run National Council for Women this year was also put on hold when the Shura Council, Egypt\u2019s upper house of parliament, was dismantled after Morsi was ousted. \u201cEgypt is never stable enough for us to introduce these draft laws,\u201d explains Farah Shash, a psychologist and researcher at El-Nadeem Centre.<\/p>\n

As it stands, under Egyptian law sexual harassment is not criminialised, and rape by objects or hands is only classified as assault.<\/p>\n

Shash says young boys are rarely reprimanded by their parents for harassing girls in public, and that it is not uncommon to see children speaking inappropriately to women as they mirror the adult behaviour around them. \u201cOften, families will just laugh,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The issue is not addressed in schools either, where the curriculum reinforces traditional gender roles. \u201cYou\u2019ll see textbook examples of girls helping their mother in the kitchen, while the boys are with their fathers at work. It sets this idea in kids\u2019 minds that women are meant to be at home [and] men on the streets,\u201d Shash says.<\/p>\n

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Talk to Al Jazeera – Ragia Omran : Abused in Egypt<\/b><\/p>\n

These attitudes contribute to a sense that men have power over women, who in turn become commodities, activists say. \u201cWomen are dehumanised, their bodies can be tampered with,\u201d explains Elmohandes.<\/p>\n

A culture of impunity<\/p>\n

There is also a culture of impunity at the state level, with assailants rarely facing any consequences for their actions. Baramawy filed a joint complaint with six other women about their sexual assaults in Tahrir before the Qasr el-Nil prosecution in March. Prosecutors were reportedly cooperative but they had no evidence: they kept asking women to identify their attackers, an impossible request with such large mobs.<\/p>\n

And, according to Heba Morayef, the Egypt director of Human Rights Watch, the security forces compound the problem. \u201cBoth the police and the military have been involved in sexual violence against women. They get away with it, so there has been no accountability,\u201d she says, noting that the military conducted forced virginity tests on female demonstrators in March 2011. Elmohandes says it has become socially unacceptable for a woman to even enter a police station because of the fear of being sexually harassed.<\/p>\n

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Posted in Nigerian Newspapers. <\/a>A DisNaija.Com<\/a> network.<\/p>\n

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