The National Council for Women (NCW) this week condemned the rape and killing of a young girl, Hoda Mohamed Taha, in a village in Upper Egypt in a case reminiscent of an earlier one concerning another young girl, Zeina Arafa. NCW Chairman Mervat Al-Tellawi, said that the perpetrator should receive the maximum penalty for the atrocious crime. Last week the police arrested Ragab Abdallah, 19, on suspicion of the rape and killing of Hoda Mohamed Taha, who was only five years old. The incident took place at the Dahmru village in the Minya governorate, where the girl's body was found naked and suffocated. Taha had apparently been on her way to her cousin's house when she had been trapped in a deserted house and raped. When the young girl started screaming after being forced to take off her clothes, she had been killed by the perpetrator. “This is a dreadful crime, and the perpetrator should receive the maximum penalty, especially since he is not a minor according to the law,” Al-Tellawi said. The authorities should cooperate to put an end to such crimes, which had started to spread in rural areas. “Families also must play a pre-eminent role in combating this phenomenon,” Al-Tellawi added. Abdallah, the young girl's neighbour, was unemployed at the time the crime took place. Taha's family has been calling for the death penalty for the perpetrator. Azza Al-Ashmawi, secretary-general of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), said that according to Article 111 of the Child Law of 2008 as well as Article 17 of the criminal law, the perpetrator should be sentenced to death. Article 111 of the 2008 law says that “no accused person should be sentenced to death, life imprisonment, or forced labour if, at the time of committing the crime, he has not reached the age of 18 years,” but this was not Abdallah's case. “At the time of the crime, the accused was 19 years old, so we expect that he will be given the maximum penalty, which is the death sentence,” said Al-Ashmawi. However, no punishment could replace the family's loss, she added. According to a recent study conducted by the NCCM, there have been 78 cases of children raping children in Egypt over the past 15 months, the latest of which was this one. “There were also 261 cases of adults raping children, and 185 of them killed their victims,” Al-Ashmawi said. The study revealed that from January 2013 to March 2014, kidnapping and child-trafficking crimes had made up 37.2 per cent of violent crimes committed against children, whereas torture had formed 21.8 per cent. Rape crimes constituted 15.9 per cent, and killing children made up 11.2 per cent of violent crimes committed against children. Negligence cases formed 10.7 per cent, while direct violence against children formed 3.2 per cent. Al-Ashmawi said that the Council was planning a campaign to try to put an end to the atrocious phenomenon. “Sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists will participate in the campaign in order to increase people's awareness about the best means of protecting children against such crimes,” she added. The council, in cooperation with the National Council for Sociological and Criminological Research (NCSCR), will also initiate a special programme to provide shelter for street children as these are amongst the highest category of children exposed to rape crimes. Intellectuals and activists have been warning against growing violence against women and children. Fadi Wagdi, co-founder of the Nidal Centre for Rights and Freedoms (NCRF), said that “the aim of the law is to protect children and maintain their safety. It's not about applying punishments or penalties, but about eradicating such crimes which threaten the country's security.” “We don't need more deterrent laws. If we apply the laws we have now, they will be enough.” Last year, a similar crime took place in the coastal city of Port Said when two minors raped and killed five-year-old Zeina Arafa. The perpetrators threw Arafa from her building's roof, and they were sentenced to 15 years in jail, the maximum allowed by law because they were minors at the time of the crime.
