Foreign women struggle sexual harassment

Foreign women struggle with ‘obscene’ sexual harassment

By Magdy Samaan
First Published: December 16, 2007

Two women dressed in modern fashion walk in downtown Cairo. From lewd looks to inappropriate touching, experts say Egypt's growing street harassment of women is a deep-rooted and largely ignored problem.
CAIRO: Natalie is an American student who was visiting Egypt two years ago. She went back to the United States with a positive impression of Arab and Egyptian culture, which encouraged her to return to learn Arabic at the American University in Cairo (AUC).
During her second extended visit to Egypt, the positive image was gradually shattered. Almost every day, she is exposed to sexual harassment that alternates between the physical and the verbal.
The Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR), which has launched a campaign against sexual harassment, is planning to research sexual harassment against foreigners in specific. According to Nehad Abu El Komsan, the center’s director, many foreign women have complained to ECWR that they experience an increased rate of sexual harassment. Most of them are teenage students.
Abu El Komsan said that foreign women are subject to more obscene harassment than their Egyptian counterparts.
“The strange thing is that when I ask people for help, but they would laugh and tell me ‘ma’lish’,” Natalie said.
“Going to the police to complain about harassment is useless because they either don’t do anything or torture the people involved,” she added, explaining that harassed women, including herself, don’t want to see people “tortured because of them.”
Victoria Hezo, a photojournalist and a Cairo resident, said, “When I came to Egypt five years ago things were better. Although my friends told me at the time that they were exposed to harassment, it wasn’t as bad as nowadays.
“These things used to happen to them in certain places, but now it is everywhere, even in Garden City and Downtown.”
Hezo said that sexual harassment has become a phenomenon to the extent that some of her friends are thinking of launching a campaign to combat it.
One of the ideas proposed is to arm women with water guns filled with red ink, once sprayed on harassers, it would shame him.
“I’m used to wearing modest clothes and don’t wear make-up to reduce the possibility of getting harassed,” she added. Hezo even dons a veil when she visits traditional places like the Friday Market to take photos. “But it doesn’t prevent people from harassing me,” she said.
Zoe, an American student residing in Cairo, said that despite the harassment, she feels Egypt is safer than other countries. She maintains, however, that it is almost impossible to study Arabic or learn about the Egyptian culture taking into consideration the reality of the “daily life in Egyptian streets.”
As a result of continued harassment, Abu El Komsan said that a lot of women decided to leave the country, whilst others filed complaints in police stations. The latter doesn’t always prove to be a rewarding option.
She recalls the story of a Turkish woman who went to file an official complaint to the police, only to find the soldiers at the police station harassing her.
Victoria, another foreign journalist, said that when covering protests she was sexually harassed by the central security soldiers.
“I don’t think that this issue is related to religion; society tends to be more conservative, and the percentage of veiled women increases but at the same time sexual harassment also increases.”
Abu El Komsan has noticed the same trend. “Unfortunately, the increase in harassment was accompanied with an increase in religiosity. But this religiosity is only superficial following the Wahabi school which doesn’t care much about the essence of religion,” she said.
Last May, Muslim Brotherhood members of parliament, asked the interior ministry about the increasing rate of sexual harassment.
General Ahmad Diaa Al-Din, the representative of interior ministry at the People’s Assembly, responded that Egyptian law is strict when it comes to such crimes. However, he attributed the increase in the rate of harassment to provocative content of mass media and to the internet.
Magda Adli, the director of Nadeem Center for Psychological Therapy and Rehabilitation of the Victims of Violence, attributes the phenomenon to the weakening trust between the people and the government. The state doesn’t guarantee the citizens a humane life and since many of them are unemployed, they have lost hope in ever getting married.
According to statistics, sexual assault cases in 2006 were only 54, Diaa El-Din noted, explaining that this type of crime has a special nature; the government can only interfere if official complaints are filed.
He added that according to statistics issued by the National Council of Criminal and Social Research, there are 20,000 cases of rape every year, while 60 percent of women are subject to sexual harassment.