Egyptian women gaining their voice on harassment

Challenge abusers, force nation to be vigilant

CAIRO - She was leaving the bus when the driver touched her in a way a stranger shouldn't.

"I screamed at him, 'You're an animal!' " said Shaimaa Abdel Rahman Aref, 28, a graduate business student. "I felt as if he was striking at my pride. I wish he had beaten me instead. It would have been much less humiliating, especially that I was veiled and not wearing anything that would arouse a man."

Aref took down the bus number and went to the police. But she found herself confronting a patriarchal society in which authorities are often indifferent to crimes against women and many families pressure their daughters and sisters to forgo justice rather than invite scandal. She said several police officers ridiculed her and her parents scolded her for breaching the line between humility and honor.

"They always put the blame on the girl," she said.

Women such as Aref are beginning to challenge their abusers and force their nation to be more vigilant against sexual harassment.

In a landmark case in October, a man was sentenced to three years of hard labor for reaching out his truck window and groping Noha Rushdi Saleh, a documentary filmmaker. One day last month, police arrested more than 300 teenagers on suspicion of harassing and flirting with women across Cairo; more than 50 youths were arrested in a sweep in the capital this month.

A recent study by the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights found that 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign women in this country, dependent on Western tourists, experience public sexual harassment, including explicit comments, groping, men exposing themselves and assault.

Nearly 97 percent of Egyptian women and 87 percent of foreigners do not alert police, the study said. But human rights activists believe that the extensive news coverage of Saleh's case may inspire more women to file complaints.

"Two weeks after [Saleh's] verdict was handed down, four complaints were filed," said Nihad Abouel Qomsan, head of the women's rights center. "In the past, we used to have no complaints over the course of a full year."

Decades ago, before the migration of villagers from the Nile Delta and southern Egypt turned Cairo into a stifling metropolis of 17 million, public sexual harassment was less prevalent. It was considered not only an affront to a woman, but to her neighborhood. Offenders caught in the act were often beaten by bystanders; some had their heads shaved by police as a mark of shame.

But that tightknit era has largely disappeared in a capital with sex on the Internet, poverty in the alleys and a police force regarded by many Egyptians as more concerned with protecting President Hosni Mubarak's regime than with guarding the rights of citizens.

Mistrust of the government and a sense of powerlessness at home have caused widespread disenchantment, especially for a generation of young men with limited opportunities.

"It's the result of slums, poverty, unemployment, a permissive media and a state that has lost all its credibility," said Judge Ahmed Mekki, vice president of Egypt's highest appeals court. "Sexual harassment can be seen as an act of rebellion against society. The state is corrupt. The family is corrupt. We Egyptians have lost our identity. We don't know where we are heading, and this is affecting our value systems."