Video showing sexual assault by mob in Egypt draws outrage

The Egyptian authorities said Thursday that they were investigating a video of a woman being attacked by a mob of men that has ignited widespread outrage over the country’s long-standing problems with sexual violence.

The video, which shows a group of men swarming around a woman, grabbing at her as she screams and struggles to get into a car, surfaced online Wednesday. Activists said it was recorded in the city of Mansura, north of Cairo, though it was not immediately clear when, except that it was night.

It was also not clear who the woman was or what happened to her after she got into the car.

At least seven people were arrested in connection with the attack, according to the news site Al Masry Al Youm.

Ragia Omran, a human rights lawyer in Cairo, said there had been outrage on social media in response to the video.

“I am of course upset and shocked that these incidents continue to happen,” Omran said in an interview Thursday.

She said she was relieved to read reports that the police had moved swiftly to investigate the case.

“I think now we have better legislation in place to fight these kinds of crimes,” Omran said, referring to tougher measures against sexual harassment that Egypt enacted in 2014. “It’s not the best, but it’s better than it was 10, 15 years ago when there was not much awareness on the issue or legislation in place to fight these crimes.”

For years, Egyptians have tried to draw attention to the routine sexual harassment and assault of women.

Soraya Bahgat, a women’s rights activist, wrote on Twitter that the attack was reminiscent of mob assaults in Tahrir Square, which have drawn international condemnation.

“Our fight is far from over & we must admit that sexual violence against women in Egypt remains a big problem,” she wrote. Responses to the video had exposed “a lot of misogyny," she added. “Many men — and women — are stating that her outfit was inappropriate & could have well provoked the men.”

A 2017 survey by two groups that promote gender equality, Promundo and UN Women, found that sexual harassment is rampant on Egyptian streets, particularly in urban areas.

More than 60% of Egyptian men reported in the survey that they had sexually harassed a woman or girl on the street, and more than three-quarters of male respondents cited a woman’s “provocative” dress as a legitimate reason for harassment. And in a 2013 study by UN Women, 99.3% of Egyptian women and girls in a survey said they had been the victims of some kind of sexual harassment, from unwanted advances to rape.

Omran said the proliferation of security cameras in Cairo may have helped discourage some sexual assaults in the city, but the problem remains common at festivals and other large public gatherings. She said the civil and legal authorities across Egyptian society still need to take the issue more seriously.

“I think it’s important to stress that this kind of behaviour doesn’t change overnight,” she said.

The police under President Hosni Mubarak, the strongman who ruled Egypt for almost three decades, largely kept sexual assault out of the public eye. But after a popular uprising ousted Mubarak during the Arab Spring in 2011, the issue burst into the open, its prevalence at demonstrations exposing the scale of the problem.

On the day that Mubarak was ousted, a CBS News correspondent, Lara Logan, was attacked and sexually assaulted by a mob while covering the celebrations in Tahrir Square in Cairo.

And in a case that drew international attention, a graphic video posted online in 2014 showed the mass sexual assault of a woman, also in Tahrir Square, during celebrations of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s election victory. A month after the attack, nine men were sentenced to lengthy terms in prison on charges of sexual assault.

© 2019 New York Times News Service