Doubts remain in Egypt despite Sisi's action against sexual harassment
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Version 0 of 1. Few could have imagined that one of Abdel Fatah al-Sisi's first photocalls as Egyptian president would be at the bedside of a sexual assault survivor. Yet on Wednesday, three days after his inauguration, Sisi was photographed apologising to a 19-year-old woman who was filmed being stripped and attacked by a mob during last Sunday's rally to celebrate his own election. It was of several public interventions Sisi made this week amid an unexpected national debate about Egypt's sexual violence and harassment epidemic. UN research suggests over 99% of Egyptian women experience street harassment, while rights groups have documented over 250 mob sexual attacks at Cairo rallies since 2011. But in the past the issue has rarely been addressed by the media, let alone leading politicians, and only a handful of harassers have ever been prosecuted. This week, after several women were mob-attacked at Sunday's rally, all this seemed to change – a bit. Seven alleged assailants were arrested. The issue dominated newspaper front pages all week. A TV presenter who laughed at the victims was suspended, albeit after a delay. The government asked YouTube to remove footage of the most notorious assault. Sisi told Egypt's top policemen to take a zero-tolerance approach to sexual crimes – and then he visited a survivor, an unprecedented move that earned him qualified praise from rights activists. "What Sisi did gives a clear message that the government recognises that this is happening," said Mozn Hassan, the director of rights group Nazra for Feminist Studies. "But the problem is that saying sorry is not the state's responsibility. The state's responsibility is to bring accountability to the people who did it, and to implement a strategic, systematic plan to combat this and eradicate the issue." Campaigners say this plan would involve proper training for police and medics in dealing with sexual crime, and a new comprehensive law that properly differentiates between kinds of sexual offences. For many, the jury is still out on whether the government can deliver. Sexual harassment was criminalised for the first time in Egypt last week, just days before Sisi took over. But there are fears about whether it will be enforced – and if Sisi is the man to do so. In his half-hearted campaign last month, Sisi frequently praised women – but with patriarchal language that positioned women as housewives rather than independent citizens. And in 2011, months after Egypt's revolution, it was Sisi, then a top general, who defended the army's practice of forcing female detainees to take virginity tests. "This is a first," said Shahira Amin, a former anchor on state television, of Sisi's hospital visit. "But I cannot forget that it was the military who committed the virginity tests, and Sisi who justified it at the time." The media has paid more attention to the issue of sexual violence than usual – one newspaper, al-Watan, used its frontpage to demand the government "Execute Them", in a reference to rapists. But campaigners say the media's approach too often still frames sexual attacks as a one-off, or sees harassment as the fault of the victim, rather than a social epidemic. "The media is giving it more attention than before, yes that's true," said Hassan. "But at the same time, it's shouldn't just be about how much the media says these things – but the way the media says them." And while many have condemned the attacks, some have done so only to score political points, said the novelist Nawal el-Saadawi, referring to attempts by supporters of both the Muslim Brotherhood and Sisi to blame each other for the attacks "They were saying, oh, the Muslim Brothers did it to spite the happiness of the people," said Saadawi, of a recent television debate about Sunday's assaults. "It may be part of that. But they should put it in context of the very low position of women in society. Patriarchy. They never put sexual harassment in its political, economic, historical and universal context." Saadawi, like many campaigners, sees harassment and sexual violence as the product of an entire culture that subordinates women, rather than just a few bad apples. And she questions whether the government has the desire to change that culture, given that a patriarchal family structure replicates – and therefore leads to the acceptance of – dictatorial governance. "If you do not have democracy in the home," summarises Saadawi, who for over six decades has been one of Egypt's highest-profile feminists, "you cannot have democracy in the state." In Sunday's notorious video, a policeman can be seen waving his gun and trying to ward away the dozens of attackers. This, coupled with the arrests of seven alleged assailants, was seen as the one positive from an abhorrent incident: police have never previously intervened in mob assaults in Tahrir Square. But even this development must be seen in context, Hassan said, as policemen are too often at the centre of harassment accusations themselves. "It's not only about one nice policeman intervening and saving the woman," she said. "People will not trust a system if the system itself is harassing and violating women." |