Mass sexual assault in Egypt
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The mass sexual assault (taharrush gamea) of women in public has been documented in Egypt since 2005.
Typically acting under the protective cover of large gatherings, assailants encircle a woman while outer rings of men deter rescuers. The attackers regularly pretend to be there to help the women, adding to the confusion. Women have reported being groped, stripped, beaten, bitten, penetrated with fingers and raped. The attacks have been described in Egypt as the "circle of hell."
Mass sexual assault has played a controversial role in Egyptian politics. In May 2005 Egyptian security forces and their agents were blamed for using it during political demonstrations in Tahrir Square, Cairo, as a weapon against female protesters. The behavior spread, and by 2012 sexual assault by crowds of young men was regularly seen at protests and religious festivals in Egypt.
Commentators say the attacks reflect a misogynist ideology that blames women for leaving the house, seeks to terrorize them out of public life, and views sexual violence as a source of shame for the victim, not the attacker.
Comparisons to attacks outside Egypt
The attacks in Egypt, and the term taharrush ("harassment" in Arabic), came to wider attention in 2016 when women in Europe reported having been sexually assaulted by groups of North African men during New Year's Eve celebrations. German police compared the attacks to the mass sexual assaults in Egypt.
Most of the attacks took place in Cologne, Germany, where 359 women filed sexual-assault complaints. Women also filed complaints in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Stuttgart; Salzburg, Austria; Helsinki, Finland; Kalmar and Malmö, Sweden; and Zurich, Switzerland. The news coverage prompted a leak to a Swedish newspaper that similar attacks had taken place in Stockholm in 2014 and 2015 during We Are Sthlm, a music festival for teenagers. The attacks were not publicized at the time for fear of stirring up racism.
According to a German local government report, the German federal police compared the attacks to "taharrush gamea (collective sexual harassment in crowds)," a practice they said existed in Arab countries, as reported by the media during the Egyptian revolution. The transliteration, taharrush gamea, followed the Egyptian pronunciation, taḥarrush gamāʿī (with a hard ⟨g⟩), rather than the standard pronunciation, taḥarrush jamāʿī. An article in Die Welt on 10 January 2016, headlined "The phenomenon 'taharrush gamea' has arrived in Germany," made international news.
The events sparked a debate about sexism, racism and the European migrant crisis. Josef Joffe, editor of Die Zeit, wrote that "acculturation into the strict sex codes of the West takes years." Dan Hitchens argued in the Spectator that mass sexual assault was a feature of Egypt, rather than of the Arab world, and that linking it to the attacks in Europe was "over-excited." Algerian writer Kamel Daoud linked the attacks in Germany to "the sexual misery of the Arab world" in a controversial op-ed of the New York Times dated 14 February 2016.
See also
