CAIRO: The current sexual assaults against female journalists and female protesters in Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square in recent days, sheds light once again on the constant sexual assaults women are facing across Egypt and their fight against the seemingly endemic problem facing the country. Although sexual harassment is one of Egypt's most enduring social pandemics, only a few cases of sexual assault have been made public and received international attention in recent years. The latest incidents however, bear the possibility to discuss the problem again, to increase awareness of sexual harassment against women in Egypt and to spur actions, which are able to improve women's situation in Egypt. Public awareness more or less started on October 24, 2006 during the Muslim feast of Eid, when online activists posted videos of gangs of men rampaging through downtown Cairo, assaulting any woman who came near them, whether veiled or not. The videos sparked anger and frustration among Egyptians, especially among women activists. Since this incident, Egypt's women's activists are constantly trying to increase national as well as international attention and awareness, but still have limited chances to change the situation. Videos, looking into the horrific situation facing many women on Egypt's busy streets, were published on Facebook and Twitter and women activists started campaigns, requesting assaulted women to speak up loud. According to harassmap.org, an initiative launched in 2010, in order to allow women to report where and how they've been harassed so other women can avoid those areas show that especially narrow, tight and dark areas in downtown Cairo are popular harassing spots, but as we have seen this past week, open and very public places also are harbingers of assaults and harassment. In July 2009, women activists achieved success when Mohamed El Sayyed, an Egyptian from Maadi was sentenced to 45 years in prison in a rare display of punishment over crimes against women in Egypt. He received the sentence after prosecutors argued successfully that he had sexually assaulted at least 9 women in Maadi. Although sexual assaults continued in Egypt over the years, the next big incident being debated in public came on February 11 this year, the day Hosni Mubarak stepped down, when reporter Lara Logan of CBS News was sexually assaulted by a crowd near Tahrir Square. The debate about sexual harassment was further increased during the last days, when award-winning Egyptian-American columnist Mona el-Tahawy detailed a horrific sexual assault by Egypt police on her personal Twitter account after she was detained for nearly 12 hours in Cairo on November 24. “Besides beating me, the dogs of CSF subjected me to the worst sexual assault ever,” she said on Twitter. “5 or 6 surrounded me, groped and prodded my breasts, grabbed my genital area and I lost count how many hands tried to get into my trousers,” she wrote. One day after, Caroline Sinz, a French reporter for public TV station France 3, became the third women sexually assaulted – reported – while reporting from Tahrir. A 2008 survey of more than 2,000 men and women by the Egyptian Centre for Women's rights claimed that 83 percent of Egyptian females and 98 percent of foreign females said they had been exposed to some form of sexual harassment. In 2010, Egypt ranked 125 out of 134 countries in gender equality. Whether Muslim or Christian, young or old, blonde-or brown-haired, foreign or Egyptian; if you are a woman in Cairo, chances are high that you are sexually assaulted one day or another and most women have their own stories to tell. BM
