CAIRO: Egyptian women's organizations condemned the state's blind eye towards sexual harassment crimes in the country, most recently last Thursday when two girls were sexually harassed in downtown Cairo and then beaten when they fought back, reported the New Women Foundation. On Thursday, September 27, two Egyptian girls were walking in the commercial center of downtown by the infamous al-Shawarby street at around three in the afternoon. One of the girls was attacked suddenly when a seller jumped on her, kissing and hugging her by force. She screamed and fought him, only to have him call his friends to join in the battering and abuse frenzy. The two girls were beaten with a stick and pulled by the hair. Deciding to take the men to the police station, they fell into a web of bureaucracy. The first police station they went to refused to file a report and they had to head to a different police station. The second, the Abdeen station, stalled for a long time before sending a police aid to arrest the criminal. The man responsible was summoned and his family tried to offer the two girls money to let him go unpunished and so did the police, who encouraged the women to simply drop the case and go home. The girls refused and the police report was made under number 6711 as a misdemeanor crime at the Abdeen police station. The assaulter tried to say he beat them because they tried to steal from him, yet the next day he said he never saw them before. He was detained from Thursday to Saturday pending investigation. “This incident is not the first and will not be the last that women face sexual harassment then be subjected to further violence because they refused to be silent on these crimes,” said the New Women Foundation and the al-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence in a joint statement on Wednesday. “We appeal to all state agencies to address the crime of sexual harassment and the allocate a hotline to receive complaints about sexual crimes against women,” the statement continued. But women can only do so much, they need the cooperation of the law enforcement to bring violators to justice, yet police attempt to play a mediating role to solve the problem without it taking its natural official course. Hence, women's organizations continue to ask the ministry of interior, mostly in vain, to be tough on its police force to take these crimes seriously. “The Interior Ministry must issue clear and firm orders for its policemen to deal seriously with the issues, and hold accountable all those who refuse to file a police report against a sexual harasser or predator,” the groups stated. According to a 2007 report by the Egyptian Center for Women Rights (ECWR), 86 percent of Egyptian women are sexually harassed daily, including those who dress modestly. Last month, the National Council for Women (NCW) said that Egyptian women are harassed “7 times every 200 meters.”
