The woman was stripped and attacked for 10 minutes. She was afterward taken away in an ambulance. peopleofshambhala
Tahrir Square became synonymous with Egypt’s pro-democracy revolution and the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Now, however, it is acquiring an altogether more sinister and shameful reputation as a place where women cannot visit without being sexually harassed or worse. On Wednesday evening a foreign woman was reportedly attacked by several dozen men. Some of the men raped her. Her husband was unable to protect her from the mob, and a number of other people that came to her aid were also attacked. According to BikyaMasr, one witness reported via Twitter that he “saw the woman and then dozens of men surrounded her and started grabbing her, when she screamed for help some people came, but they were hit in the face.” The woman was stripped and attacked for 10 minutes. She was afterward taken away in an ambulance. HarassMap, a website dedicated to monitoring sexual harassments and violence in Egypt, shows that the number of incidents rocketed in November 2011, and has remained high since then. Women and men that are harassed or assaulted are able to alert the public by posting details on HarassMap’s website.According to several accounts sexual harassment and groping has taken place at Tahrir Square, which appears to be getting a reputation for being a dangerous place for women. “Some people in Tahrir are harassing unveiled girls,” writes one woman, “I was sexually harassed many times in 5 minutes.””I got ogled & touched many times in the middle of tear-gas bombs [at] Mohammed Mahmud st[reet], writes another woman” Another woman says that while she was leaving “the square, someone horribly touched me but I couldn’t see him cause there were many men around me!!” A man describing himself as “a male doctor” says that a young woman, who appears to have been a pro-democracy activist, asked for his help after being followed: “a 20 years old girl came to the clinic, she was shivering I thought she’s feverish I asked her what’s wrong, she asked me to hide her, coz two guys, were stalking her to touch her, through streets, she was begging for protection, with tears in her eyes took her to a safe place in the mosque, and one hour later I took her to the metro station, coz she wanted to go home. also pr[o]mises herself she will never come back to el tahrir for protesting anymore.” When Egyptian blogger Aliaa Mahdy protested for more liberty by posting nude photographs of herself on her website she was threatened with rape and death. However, as Rime Naguib in Egypt Independent noted, “according to the latest “Google trends” statistics, Egypt ranks fourth worldwide in the highest web search requests for the word ‘sex’.” It was not Aliaa’s nudity that offend Egyptian men, but the fact that she presented herself as a woman and a person, and as an equal to men.
