Egypt's harassment disease

[Al-khiyal]

Phone stalkers torment Egypt's women

October 19, 2009 -- The crowded, bustling streets of Cairo can be an intimidating environment for women who venture out alone or even in groups. It is well known that sexual harassment is a pervasive problem in Egypt, from touching to lewd and abusive cat calls. But it seems there is another phenomenon that goes largely unreported, phone stalking. With the advance of modern technology a large number of women complain they receive the unwelcome and relentless attention of men they have never met. One of our colleagues in the BBC office has had a number of phone stalkers, who call repeatedly through the day and sometimes in the middle of the night. She has given them no encouragement - but rarely do they need it. "What's your name?" enquired one whose mobile number has become depressingly recognisable. "What's your NAME?" he demanded insistently. "Hello.... Hello." He knows who he is talking to, because some weeks ago our colleague had engaged him in conversation, a decision she soon regretted. It was the only encouragement he needed to start pestering her with calls.

Most of the harassment - calls and texts - are from young men who ring numbers at random, and often the conversations are fairly commonplace. But occasionally they can lead to something more sinister. "We know of some cases where it has turned nasty," said Nihad Qomsan, from the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights. "We have had cases where the caller tells her, 'I know you, I know your address' or 'I know where you work or where you study'. And he keeps calling - then the language becomes more threatening or insulting. By then it is too late." At the youth magazine Teenstuff, the girls we interviewed said they'd all experienced some form of phone stalking. "I was once stalked by someone I know," said 16-year-old Safeya Zeitoun. "He would call every hour." "I give the phone to my brother and he shouts at them," said another 16-year-old, Marwa Makhlouf . "I had a guy who kept calling me at 0400," said Mona Bassell, 17. "He said: 'Hey, how are you doing?' as if he was a friend. I told him to stop calling but he said: 'No, I want to get to know you.' They think it is funny but it's so frustrating and sometimes it causes real problems for the girl. Sometimes she has to tell her friends and only when they each share their stories do they realise they all have the same problem."

In fact in a survey last year of 2,000 women by the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights, 83% said they had encountered some form of sexual harassment - 23% said they were receiving obscene phone calls. But even so, statistics on how widespread this is are hard to come by. Nonetheless there are those who believe phone stalking is symptomatic of a bigger issue. "The only outlet for legitimate sex in Arab society is marriage, which is very difficult to afford these days," said Said Sadek, sociologist from the American University of Cairo. "Repressed sex in Egyptian society manifests itself in many forms: crank calls, Arabic porn channels, harassing women in the street, secret marriages - it is a real problem. They call any number until a woman answers in a soft way, in a way they might find a bit encouraging and they pursue her. But if women filed a complaint about this kind of thing - the caller can be found, no problem."

It should be easy to stamp out. About two years ago, following a number of angry protests and strikes organised by mobile phone users, the government moved swiftly to introduce legislation that required anyone buying a Sim card for a mobile phone to supply a name and address. And yet all too often the harassment goes unreported. Either women don't believe it will be taken seriously or they don't want the added frustration of the red tape. "Historically there have been lots of barriers between women and the police," said Nihad Qomsan. "In the past the police station has often been a source of more problems. But increasingly they are taking these cases of sexual harassment more seriously, which is positive."

In February this year, parliament introduced a bill seeking the introduction of stronger penalties for sexual harassment. It will compel police to investigate all allegations of sexual harassment and those guilty of phone stalking could receive heavy fines. But the evidence suggests there is still a way to go in changing the attitude of both men and women so that society understands that sexual harassment includes all forms of physical and verbal abuse.

[Al-khiyal]

Egypt's harassment disease

October 23, 2009-- When I was a student at university in Cairo, the college campus was considered a safe haven, a refuge from the lewd and abusive harassment that female students suffered on their way to class. American year-abroad students in particular regularly stumbled on to campus in tears of rage, fuming at the liberties men took on the streets of Cairo. Last week's report on the rise of phone harassment in Egypt illustrated an extension of this culture. Unlike Saudi Arabia, where consensual phone relationships between men and women are struck up to circumvent the gender segregation in the country, in Egypt these calls are one-sided and predatory – an outlet for lewd and violating language. We're not talking good-natured flattery. References to body parts and sexual acts are common.

Apparently, however, this is how males act in a sexually repressed society. This is an unsatisfactory and patronising explanation. It is also a cop-out, allowing offenders to claim some sort of victimhood and sympathy for their "repressed" state. Egypt is hardly the most sexually repressed country in the Arab world; indeed, it is one of the most liberal in terms of pop culture and social freedoms. The gender segregation and extreme repression in some Gulf countries has not spawned this visceral and endemic degradation of women.

Cairo has a vibrant street culture and most harassment occurs in the street, where groups of men manifest their male machismo by dehumanising women. There is something rather Dickensian about Cairo, with its vast class discrepancies, overpopulation and crushing poverty. In addition, there is a gap between portrayals of women and lifestyle in the media and the reality experienced by millions of Egyptians. There is a surfeit of hyper-sexualised images of belly dancers, actresses and singers, movies with sexual content and music videos that are not in line with the fundamentally traditional nature of the country. This popularises a view, created and packaged by a mass media industry, of women as sexual objects, the root of all sin and the downfall of men.

In an exploitive and skewed social structure, men and women find it hard to achieve domestic security due to the prohibitive costs of marriage and accommodation. It is not that the Egyptian man is starved of sex, it is the lack of a viable domestic alternative when he is too old to be loitering in his parents' house. Living on your own in Egypt is frowned upon and so men are left stranded between the marital and parental homes. The absence of a "scene" for singles of both sexes to mix has left groups of feral males impotently lusting after the female population, safe in their numbers and anonymity. Women on the end of phone lines are even more faceless, which allows men to project their frustration and disempowerment with even less risk of exposure.

Religious efforts to address the issue have also been complicit in absolving men of their crimes, objectifying women and doing more harm than good with campaigns that blame women for the phenomenon. The "Cover Your Lollipop" campaign likens women to candy, there for the consumption and enjoyment of men. The campaign's poster portrays two lollipops, one covered with a wrapper, symbolising the hijab, and the other uncovered, with flies hovering over its exposed sweetness. Under the images, text outlines the divine wisdom of the veil, betraying a disturbing mentality that "views women as objects of pleasure and entertainment".

Even Suzanne Mubarak, the first lady of Egypt, maintains this line of denial, stating that Egyptian men fundamentally respect women and that harassment incidents may have been blown out of proportion by Islamic elements furthering their own agenda. This is where the issue truly becomes cancerous. When the state is more concerned with face-saving and point-scoring, the apathy filters down through all areas of law enforcement. Harsher penalties are hardly going to be dispensed when there is a denial that the problem exists in the first place. There have been some efforts to criminalise harassment and an Egyptian female student has launched an awareness-raising pamphlet distribution programme, but with little official support.

Perhaps the answer is to first dispense with all the excuses and justifications. Men take such liberties when conditions encourage them and the authorities are so indifferent that harassment becomes part of everyday life. However, as with most oppressive governments in the Arab world with weak civil societies, in Egypt any criticism of the status quo is seen as striking at the heart of the establishment. The best approach is to tackle the problem at its roots – on the streets, in the media and in people's homes.

[Al-khiyal]

Egypt:
Demands for sexual harassment law

CAIRO, December 4, 2009 -- Egyptian human rights and legal activists for women’s rights called on the Egyptian government to issue severe penalties and the criminalization of sexual harassment of women in the street and in the workplace. They demanded that the labor and penal codes should include more “visible and deterrent penalties to whomever harasses a woman,” expressing their dissatisfaction with the continued worsening of the phenomenon of sexual harassment of girls and women in public parks and streets during holidays. The activists said the government is liable for the aggravation of this phenomenon because of the spread “of a culture of political tyranny, impoverishment, unemployment and the collapse of the economic and social conditions.”

Farida al-Nakash, a political activist and Editor-in-chief of the Egyptian leftist newspaper al-Ahali, said that the authorities are not interested in the elimination or reduction of sexual harassment, likening it to “the story of football these days with Algeria” in order “to distract people from the political and economic failure.” She said this failure with sexual harassment reveals the state and “the deterioration of moralities in the society." “This is linked to manifestations of corruption, tyranny and social disruption on the one hand, and on the other, sexual harassment of women is an evidence of the collapse of the status of women in this society, as women are seen as a creature that provokes temptation and a second-class citizen, that must be besieged, either by the imposition of the veil or by forcing women to stay home,” she added.

Nakash added that that the harassment of women is a reflection of the “consumer culture created by the market system for many years, a system that considers women a commodity like other goods, for advertising and trade.” She stressed that everyone knows that the “capitalism that rules the world now is profiting from the prostitution trade and white slavery with billions of dollars.” She pointed out that trafficking in women is the third largest global trade after arms and the drug trade. Nakash proposed that the solution to the phenomenon of sexual harassment of women is to change the economic and social policies and transition to a democratic society, “in order to turn the society from a consumer into a producer.” She accused religious institutions of passivity towards women’s rights, as they are promoting the principle that women are something to be “ashamed” of and are not human beings with full rights, saying the institutions “did not even issue a fatwa to criminalize sexual harassment of women.”

According to the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights in a recent report, 98 percent of foreign women, and over 60 percent of Egyptian women are subjected to daily sexual harassment, and the center accused the police of “negativity” and that police “do not cooperate enough and watches the harassers without taking a step against them.”

Mona Ezzat, another human rights activist and director of the unit of raising awareness at Cairo’s New Women’s Institute, said that the harassment of women is not confined to the parks and streets in festivals and these events, but “extends to harassment in the workplace, educational institutions, in the context of an increasing violence in society where women are considered just another commodity,” pointing out that this phenomenon reveals that the man is “the stronger party and exercises control on women as the weaker party as means to unload the repression practiced by the government and by promoters of Wahhabi extremist religious culture. She stressed that the government and conservatives treat women as a “commodity,” echoing Nakash’s argument.

For his part, Gamal Eid, Executive Director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) believes that stiffening penalties for harassers is not enough by itself, stressing the need for changing the cultural and social atmosphere also against women. He accused religious scholars of “addressing issues that serve the authority and of being, oblivious to serious issues of this kind.”