Yeman: Women's Struggle Continues

From the Vancouver Sun:

When Sara Ahmed joined a protest in November to demand the resignation of Yemen’s president, she and the other women marched at the very front of the crowd. But no sooner had they set off through the capital than they were shepherded towards the back.

“On that day, I realized we had two fights,” said Ahmed, a 24-year-old sociology student and women’s rights advocate, who took part in some of the first protests in Yemen last year that helped oust President Ali Abdullah Saleh from office.

“A battle against the regime, but also another struggle — a fight within the fight — against those elements inside the revolution who oppose us and our rights as women.”

One of the poorest countries in the world and the worst for gender equality, according to a UN study based on literacy and other factors, Yemeni women defied deep-rooted traditions by even participating in the campaign against Saleh, then became pivotal players in it.

Now with Saleh deposed and a political transition underway, female activists fear the country is moving forward without them, and that men who were keen to have them on the streets crying freedom do not now want them in parliament, universities or the workplace.

Update on Egyptian Virginity Test Case

Following on from this June post on Egypt: Virginity Test On Female Protestors, comes this update from VOA:

Perhaps more surprising than an Egyptian military tribunal finding one of its own not guilty of forcing a "virginity test" on a detainee, is that the case went ahead at all. There are social, economic and political restrictions faced by Egyptian women, and proposals to advance their rights.

Samira Ibrahim, the woman who lost her case of sexual assault against a military doctor Sunday, not only took on Egypt's leadership but also the nation's deeply conservative attitudes toward women.

Human Rights Watch researcher Heba Morayef said the military rulers took full advantage of those views.

“Samira has had many different battles to fight and also has to deal with the kind of reputational smearing that went on in the media, and in particular, as a result of statements by military generals who, as early as April, went on saying the women who spent the night in Tahrir [Square, protesting], or the women who went to Tahrir, were women of bad morals and ill repute,” said Morayef.

Women took a large part in the 18-day uprising last year that brought down long-time president Hosni Mubarak. But according to political analyst Rania el-Malki, “on Day 19, everything changed.”

Egypt: Attacks on Women Continue

From albawaba:

Two articles that tell of the continued distress of badly-treated women in Tahrir, including foreign Arab American who was stripped of clothes and assaulted in Egypt's Tahrir Square.

Article One:

Heather still doesn’t know how she made it home on Wednesday night after being in Egypt’s Tahrir Square. The Arab-American arrived back at her Cairo flat without pants, having had them torn off downtown. She and her two roommates were victims of a mob attack by people in the iconic square on Wednesday, as protesters demonstrated against the military junta.

According to Heather, an Arab-American living in the Egyptian capital, she and her Swedish and Spanish roommates took to Tahrir as thousands were converging there to mark one-year since the ousting of former President Hosni Mubarak.

Article Two:

Thousands took to the streets in Egypt to protest against the military junta. By late Wednesday night, the conversation had turned away from the military council and on to Egypt’s most pressing social problem: sexual violence against women.

At least four women have been reported to have had their clothes ripped from their bodies, assault and groped endlessly by mobs of men in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Certainly more reports of assaults will flood editors’ email in the coming days. It seems whenever there is a mass protest in Egypt it is accompanied by attacks against women.

Egypt: Virginity Tests Illegal

From the Guardian:

Forced "virginity tests" on female detainees were ruled illegal in Egypt on Tuesday, after a court ordered an end to the practice.

Hundreds of activists were in the Cairo courtroom to hear the judge, Aly Fekry, say the army could not use the test on women held in military prisons in a case filed by Samira Ibrahim, one of seven women subjected to the test after being arrested in Tahrir Square during a protest on 9 March.

Fekry, head of the Cairo administrative court, decreed that what happened to Ibrahim and six other detainees was illegal and any similar occurrence in the future would also be considered illegal.

The court is expected to issue a further injunction against such tests and decree that the test was completely illegal, opening the door for financial compensation.

After the verdict Ibrahim, 25, posted on Twitter: "Thank you to the people, thank you to Tahrir Square that taught me to challenge, thank you to the revolution that taught me perseverance."

The 25-year-old marketing manager, who said she faced death threats for bringing the case, told CNN: "Justice has been served today.

"These tests are a crime and also do not comply with the constitution, which states equality between men and women. I will not give up my rights as a woman or a human being."

Kitti Green & the KGB

From Adelaide Now:

THREE women were stripped naked and an Aussie filmmaker was kidnapped as the KGB broke up a feminist protest.

Kitti Green spent more than six hours being interrogated by the local KGB security service, who freed her only after the Australian embassy in Moscow intervened.

The KGB dumped Ms Green at the Lithuanian border, but three Ukrainian women who were travelling with her - Inna Shevchenko, Oxana Shachko and Alexandra Nemchinov - were beaten after being seized at a Minsk railway station.

"They were blindfolded and driven around in a bus all night," the feminist group Femen said.

"They were taken into the woods, had oil poured on them, were forced to take their clothes off, were threatened to be set on fire.

"They threatened them with a knife, which they later used to cut off their hair. Then they threw them out into the woods naked and without documents."

The women were protesting to mark President Alexander Lukashenko's disputed re-election a year ago.

From Salon:

A group of women from a Ukrainian topless-protest group on Wednesday recounted their ordeal in neighboring Belarus, where they claimed they were kidnapped, beaten and abused by local security officials.

Oksana Shechko told the Associated Press that she and two fellow activists with Femen were interrogated on a bus for 12 hours, made to undress in the woods in freezing temperatures, punched in the head and back, threatened with death and rape, smeared with paint and had some of their hair cut of.

Shechko charged that the Belarusian authorities were punishing them for a protest in Minsk on Monday in which they bared their breasts to bring attention to President Aleksander Lukashenko’s crackdown on the opposition.

“It was a real fight for survival,” Shechko said after returning to Kiev, her voice trembling. “We ended up in the hands of the butchers who kill and terrify the Belarusian people.”

Egypt's Women Protest

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Thousands of woman marched through downtown Cairo on Tuesday evening to call for the end of military rule in an extraordinary expression of anger over images of soldiers beating, stripping and kicking a female demonstrator on the pavement of Tahrir Square.

"Drag me, strip me, my brothers' blood will cover me!" they chanted. "Where is the field marshal?" they demanded, referring to Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the military council holding onto power here. "The girls of Egypt are here."

The event may have been the biggest women's demonstration in Egypt's history, and the most significant since a 1919 march led by pioneering Egyptian feminist Huda Shaarawi to protest British rule.

The women's chants were evidently heard at military headquarters as well. On Tuesday evening, the ruling military council offered an abrupt apology.

"The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces expresses its utmost sorrow for the great women of Egypt, for the violations that took place during the recent events," the council said in a statement. "It stresses its great appreciation for the women of Egypt and for their right to protest and to actively, positively participate in political life on the path of democratic transition."

Although no one in the military has been publicly investigated or charged in connection with any misconduct, the statement asserted that the council had already taken "all the legal actions to hold whoever is responsible accountable."

Just two hours before the women massed, a coalition of liberal and human rights groups unveiled a plan to try to break the state media's grip on public opinion by holding screenings around the country of video capturing recent military abuses.

Egypt: Virginity Test On Female Protestors

From Bikyamasr:

In yet another sign of the poor treatment of women in Egypt, its military rulers attempted to defend so-called ‘virginity’ tests that had been employed on female protesters during the Army’s attempt to clear out central Cairo in early March. Top military brass officials said the “tests” were to prove these women “were not like my daughter or your’s.”

It is not the first time that the Egyptian authorities have used sexual intimidation against female protesters. Over the past decade, during the rule of former President Hosni Mubarak, police have been accused a number of times of sexually assaulting female detainees, journalists and citizens. The treatment of women in the country reached a head in February after CBS reporter Lara Logan was assaulted by dozens of men on February 11 during the celebrations of the end of the Mubarak era.

Muriel Duckworth

From Associated Press:

Canadian activist Muriel Duckworth, a passionate pacifist who for decades was an advocate for women's rights and social justice, has died. She was 100.

Duckworth died Saturday in palliative care in a hospital in Magog, Quebec, according to the Halifax Chronicle Herald.

Duckworth vigorously protested wars dating back to the Second World War, and was still attending peace rallies during the U.S.-led war in Iraq.