Video of Mass Sexual Assault Taints Egyptian Inauguration

Cairo: A video showing a mass sexual assault on a nearly naked woman in the midst of inaugural celebrations for Egypt's new president is testing his pledge to curb an epidemic of such attacks, with captured scenes of a police officer with a gun in his hand struggling against a crowd of men to extricate the victim.

At first a black shirt covered just her shoulders, her backside purple and black with bruises as the frenzied assailants tore it off. Moments later, she was seen stripped completely, as her limp and reddened body was carried into a waiting vehicle.

Captured in a blurry 2-minute video taken in Tahrir Square on Sunday and circulated via YouTube on Monday, the attack is forcing the new president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, to confront a phenomenon many here had blamed on the collapse of the police force during the uprising against Hosni Mubarak in 2011: the recurring mass sexual assaults that have taken place amid the crowds that have gathered in Tahrir Square ever since.

"This is a threat to our security," said Ghada Shahbander, a human rights advocate. "It is a question for every government we have had over the past decade: What are you going to do about it?"
A spokesman for the president's office did not respond to requests for comment. El-Sissi pledged during his campaign that he would "restore the sense of shame" that he said had once prevented such sexual assaults or harassment, and on the eve of his inauguration, the military-backed government he installed amended the penal code to update and broaden the definition of sexual harassment - although not rape or sexual assault - and punish it with jail time.

But instead of condemning the many reports of assaults in the square during the five days of on-and-off celebration that preceded his inauguration, many el-Sissi supporters have sought to laugh off the problem, or to attribute it to a campaign by his Islamist opponents.

As the video of the assault circulated over the Internet on Monday, the official National Council of Women declared in a statement that "such shameful and immoral behavior cannot come from the honorable Egyptians" who supported el-Sissi's ouster of his predecessor, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead, the council asserted that "unknown entities" were plotting "to commit such heinous acts in a systematic way to ruin Egyptians' happiness and taint the image of its democratic celebration."

Pro-el-Sissi television journalists in Tahrir Square, meanwhile, had been reporting - and playing down - the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault since the celebrations began last Tuesday at the declaration of his victory.

"Unfortunately, incidents of gang harassment are widespread," a female correspondent told a talk show host, Moataz al-Demerdash.
The connection was lost, and al-Demerdash picked up for her: "Festivity as Egyptians approach a new leaf in their political future," he said, "but she says there may be deliberate attempts to create incidents of harassment."

There may be purposeful efforts "to ruin the happiness," his guest, Hala Mustapha, a senior editor at a state-run journal, said, adding: "It could be exceptional and limited. It is obvious that the celebration is big."

Even as the mass assault captured on video was occurring Sunday night, a female correspondent for the pro-el-Sissi Tahrir Channel began to report incidents of sexual harassment as well.
But a host, Maha Bahnasy, interrupted, giggling.

"Well, they are happy," she said. "The people are having fun."

An independent group that calls itself I Saw Harassment said in a statement that the victims of at least four attacks required hospitalization Sunday night, while another required "psychological support." Another group, Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment, said it was following up with the victims of "tens of assaults" Sunday night alone.

At times, the prevalence of sexual violence in the crowds was hard even for the official state television network to hide. As female screams interrupted the broadcast of a nationalistic poet reciting from a stage Sunday night, a man next to him urged, "Play a song to distract them!" Then, when the screams grew louder, another man seized the microphone, saying: "Young men, please move away from the girls! Men, young men, get back!"

The Interior Ministry said in its statement Monday that the police had arrested seven men and boys, ages 15 to 49, for harassment. But in an interview, Hany Abdel Latif, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said he could not say if the arrests were related to the mass assault seen in the video.

"Of course, you saw the officers interfering and taking the woman away from the scene," Abdel Latif said of the video, suggesting that such episodes were difficult to prevent.

"The celebrations included large crowds that reached thousands and millions in some cases, and harassment happens in these crowds," he said, but "the police confront it in a vigorous way."

Egyptian state news media reported that three women with "grave injuries" had testified to prosecutors about their assaults and would be examined by forensic doctors, and a fourth woman was in a hospital "in a critical condition." Other women had declined to file complaints, the state newspaper Al Ahram reported.

Rights advocates have long blamed Egypt's patriarchal culture for the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault of women in public spaces. They fault the Egyptian police for failing to train its officers to combat sexual violence, or even for blaming the victims. The police routinely provide a victim's identity to an assault suspect, allowing him or his family to pressure his victim to withdraw the claim.

Several rights advocates noted that the government's new penalties for sexual harassment did nothing to change the narrow laws about what constitutes rape or assault, or to address the problem of enforcement.

"The state continues to be unable to stand up to these crimes," declared a joint statement from a coalition of 25 rights groups issued by Nazra for Feminist Studies, adding that they had documented more than 250 cases of mass sexual assault at such public gatherings between November 2012 and January 2014, and at least nine on Sunday night alone.

In its statement, I Saw Harassment criticized the Interior Ministry for dropping its security around the square at nightfall.

"It is shameful that the security leaders of the Ministry of Interior did not take into account any security measures or plans to prevent such incidents despite their repetition in different scenes," the group said.

Rights advocates have been skeptical of el-Sissi regarding sexual assault issues because he first drew public attention in 2011 as an army general for defending the military's imposition of forced "virginity tests" on female detainees. "The virginity test procedure was done to protect the girls from rape as well as to protect the soldiers and officers from rape accusations," el-Sissi, then the chief of military intelligence, said in April 2011, implying that only virgins could be victims of rape.

But in his campaign, el-Sissi repeatedly emphasized his respect and support for Egyptian women.

"It pains me very much when someone offends her in any way," he said in his first interview. "It goes against gallantry, magnanimity and manhood."

Asked how he would combat sexual harassment, he said he would rely on the news media, schools and religious institutions to raise awareness and restore the "shame" in engaging in such behavior.
He was counting on the Egyptian woman, he said, "because she is the dynamo of life; she is the calm, tender, merciful and wise voice heard in the household," and could motivate her husband and sons to work hard and economize. "I trust her very much, and I respect her very much and I tell her: You are a great woman."

(May Kamel contributed reporting)