CAIRO: A foreign woman was stripped and sexually assaulted on Wednesday evening in Egypt's iconic Tahrir Square, one eyewitness said on Twitter and another confirmed in an email to Bikyamasr.com. The woman, who's identity has not been revealed, was taken away in an ambulance after being assaulted for 10 minutes. Her husband reportedly was unable to intervene and witnessed the incident. “I saw the woman and then dozens of men surrounded her and started grabbing her, when she screamed for help some people came, but they were hit in the face,” wrote one witness. What happened next was “appalling,” said the trusted witness, who asked for anonymity. “The men just started tearing at her clothes and grabbing her body all over. When she fought back, they pushed her. It was chaos.” There were unconfirmed reports that the men “violated” her with their hands. The nationality of the woman is unknown at the current time. Throughout the day, sexual harassment towards women has been increasing and more and more reports of women being grabbed and groped began being reported. Activists called the attacks on women completely “unacceptable” and must be exposed no matter what. They demanded an end to all violence toward women. “What happened in Tahrir today has no justification and must be fully exposed even if it taints Tahrir!” wrote EgyptSecularist on Twitter. The incident brings memories of reporter Lara Logan, who was sexually assaulted the night former President Hosni Mubarak gave up power. A mob of men ripped the 40-year-old correspondent away from her crew and bodyguard, tearing at her clothes and beating her in broad daylight. “People don't really know that much about [post-traumatic stress disorder],” she told the New York Daily News in her latest interview on the incident. ”There's something called latent PTSD. It manifests itself in different ways. I want to be free of it, but I'm not.” In an interview with “60 minutes” in April, Logan spoke publicly about the incident for the first time. She confided that the attack lasted for about 25 minutes, as 200 to 300 men assaulted her. She feared for her life and imagined that she would not survive, she explained. Logan was finally pulled to safety by an Egyptian woman and a soldier who witnessed the attack. She and her team were brought back to their hotel, where she received an examination and medical treatment. She returned to the United States the following morning where she entered hospital for four days. Logan confided in her latest interview that nightmares about the incident come at unexpected times, like when she is tucking her infant daughter into bed. Instances of sexual assaults on female journalists covering the events in Tahrir Square have continued in the year since Mubarak's ouster. According to studies conducted by the Egyptian Center for Women's Right (ECWR) in 2008, 98 percent of foreign women and 83 percent of Egyptian women surveyed had experienced sexual harassment in Egypt. Meanwhile, 62 percent of Egyptian men confessed to harassing women and 53 percent of Egyptian men faulted women for “bringing it on.” 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, the debate about sexual violence in the square became reignited. “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 – and reported – while reporting from Tahrir. As more women like Logan, el-Tahawy and Sinz bravely come forward to speak about these instances of abuse, public awareness about the issues facing women in Egypt has improved and helped to foster a healthy dialogue about addressing this disturbing social pandemic. ** Sarah Sheffer contributed to this report BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/ZjdEq Tags: Assault, featured, Harassment, Jan25, Tahrir Section: Egypt, Latest News, Sexual Harassment, Women
