There is an escalating pattern of physical attacks by Egyptian military and police officers against women and male protesters, journalists, and activists in Cairo, some of which are sexual in nature, Human Rights Watch said today. News reports and images of protesters in Cairo being stripped, beaten, and dragged through the street in the past several days are just the latest incidents.
The Supreme Council for the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Interior Ministry should order an immediate halt to these attacks, Human Rights Watch said. The Office of the Public Prosecutor, the civilian judicial authority, should speedily, vigorously, and transparently investigate assaults on demonstrators by military and police officers and by civilians, and prosecute those responsible, to put an end to a climate of impunity for sexual crimes.
“Images of military and police who strip, grope, and beat protesters have horrified the world and brought into sharp focus the sexual brutality Egyptian women face in public life,” saidNadya Khalife, Middle East and North Africa women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The military and civilian authorities need to put a halt to criminal attacks on demonstrators once and for all.”
On December 16, 2011, security forces attacked and beat demonstrators protesting in front of the Egyptian Cabinet. The Health Ministry said on December 19 that 500 protesters or bystanders had been injured since December 16, and 12 were killed. On the same day, news outlets broadcast footage of Egyptian military police beating, stomping on, and hitting protesters with bars, including a veiled woman whose clothes had been torn off, exposing her torso.
On December 19, Gen. Adel Emara commented on the attack of the veiled woman, telling journalists “yes this scene actually happened and we are investigating it. We will disclose the investigation results in full. We do not want to conceal anything.” The military cannot investigate itself with any independence, and only an investigation by Egypt’s civilian judicial authorities with full cooperation from the military can provide a remedy to all protesters, Human Rights Watch said.
Egyptian women’s rights groups, including the New Woman Foundation, that have been documenting attacks on women demonstrators, told Human Rights Watch that at least nine women were arrested during last weekend’s protests, and some of them said security forces had physically and verbally assaulted them.
Salma al Naqqash, coordinator of the Women Human Rights Defenders program at Nazra for Feminist Studies, a research group, told Human Rights Watch that there is a pattern of security forces and civilians preventing women from exercising their right to protest. Al Naqqash said that security forces and private individuals have subjected women demonstrators to verbal and physical assault, threatened them with rape in detention, and stripped them in the street to deter them from protesting.
Ghada Kamal Abdel Khaleq, 28, said in a video posted on YouTube that about 10 security forces beat her severely in the street adjacent to the Egyptian Cabinet on December 16 as she was taking part in a protest and rushed to help a wounded woman beaten to the ground. She said that she was detained, and at least one officer physically and verbally attacked her in detention, including making sexual threats against her. She said security forces beat her all over her body, pulled her hair, stepped on her face and chest, and verbally assaulted her. Abdel Khaleq said she saw other women who had been detained bleeding from head injuries and that the women told her security forces had also insulted and threatened them.
Women in public in Egypt, whether demonstrators, journalists, activists, or simply passers-by going about their business, frequently experience sexual harassment and assaults, Human Rights Watch said. The ruling military council has continued the poor record of the ousted Mubarak administration by failing to prevent, investigate, or punish such attacks.
While the SCAF amended penal code provisions on sexual assault in March to increase penalties for rape and “indecency,” it has failed to enforce the existing law in cases that fall short of rape, allowing sexual harassment to go unpunished and creating a climate of impunity, Human Rights Watch said.
As party to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Egypt is under an obligation to act with due diligence to prevent, investigate, and prosecute cases of violence against women, and to take action to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women. The United Nations body that monitors implementation of this treaty has expressed serious concern about violence against women in Egypt, including the culture of silence and impunity for such crimes. Egypt remains one of only four members of the African Union not to have signed or ratified the Maputo Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, the key African treaty on women’s rights.
“At this crucial stage in Egypt’s history, women need to be able to take part in demonstrations and elections without fear,” Khalife said. “Security forces’ disgraceful attacks and the government’s broader failure to address sexual violence and harassment do not bode well for Egypt’s women.”
A Pattern of Attacks on Women by Security Forces In late November 2011, Egypt’s Central Security Forces (CSF or riot police) arrested several female journalists and activists in Cairo’s Tahrir Square area, and sexually assaulted and beat at least two of them. Prosecutors have not opened an investigation into the attacks, nor have the security forces announced any disciplinary action against the attackers.
On November 19, riot police arrested Sanaa Youssef during a demonstration on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, near Tahrir Square, and took her behind police lines. Youssef wrote on her blog later:
I was in the midst of around 25 or 30 officers in CSF uniforms and plain clothes. One officer lifted his hand and said, “Don’t touch her.” It was as if this was a secret code to say, “Do whatever you want with her.” One of them hit me on the face and another kicked me while a third pulled me by my hair so that I couldn’t move my head to the right or left and this helped keep my head still so that they could slap me. I wish it had stopped there but unfortunately with great pain I have to confess that their hands did not have mercy on my body and they harassed me with all their filth and brutality and lack of conscience. What made it worse is that two of them grabbed the two ends of my scarf around my neck and pulled them in opposite directions. I felt like I was choking and tried to pull the scarf away from my throat while they were continuing to harass me.
A US-based Egyptian journalist, Mona Al Tahawy, told Human Rights Watch that on November 23, CSF agents arrested her on Mohamed Mahmoud Street and that at least four men then beat and sexually assaulted her. Al Tahawy told Human Rights Watch:
They were beating me with their sticks. I lifted my left arm to protect myself but they hit that too, which is when they broke it. While they were hitting me they were grabbing my breasts and my genital area, putting their hands into my trousers. I kept saying, Stop it! Stop it! All this time they were insulting me, saying, “You whore, You daughter of …” They then pulled me by my hair toward the Ministry of Interior, still groping me whenever they could. They were like a pack of wild animals.
The Egyptian military and civilian authorities have failed to respond to these incidents with app
ropriate seriousness, Human Rights Watch said. Col. Islam Jaffar of the Egyptian military was quoted inThe New York Timesas saying, when questioned about the attack on Al Tahawy:
She complained to me that she was beaten and sexually assaulted by Central Security Forces….But what did she expect would happen? She was in the middle of the streets, in the midst of clashes, with no press card or form of ID. The press center had not given her permission to be in the streets as a journalist. The country is in a sensitive situation. We are under threat. She could be a spy for all we know.
Military officers, including soldiers from the military police and other military units, have also attacked peaceful women demonstrators and in some cases sexually assaulted them. A woman who took part in a protest on October 9 told Human Rights Watch, “They (military officers) beat us with sticks and electric rods…they hit us on our backs… and as I fell I heard someone saying, ‘Let them go’…but someone [a member of the security forces] responded, ‘Those are dogs and whores.’”
For months, the Egyptian military refused to reveal whether it was conducting a genuine investigation into or prosecuting any of the military officers who conducted “virginity tests”– another form of sexual assault – on women being held in the military prison in Hikestep on March 10. It was only on December 20, after the latest incidents of sexual attacks on women that Adel Morsy said in a press release that “the virginity test incident has been referred to the High Military Court and is currently at the trial stage.”
Human rights lawyers representing one of the victims, Samira Ibrahim, filed a complaint on June 23 at the office of the military prosecutor. Ibrahim’s lawyers filed a civil complaint on her behalf before the Council of State, Egypt’s administrative court, to challenge the military’s lack of action. The case challenges the administrative decision to conduct the virginity tests in the military prison. A decision is expected on December 27.
“Security forces sexually assault women on the street, and the officials in charge shrug their shoulders and look the other way,” Khalife said. “The military cannot investigate itself with any independence, so the civilian Public Prosecutor should immediately order an investigation of the assaults on demonstrators, including on Al Tahawy and other women, and hold the attackers accountable.”
Sexual Assault by Civilians Over the past year, women have frequently reported verbal and physical sexual harassment by civilians in Tahrir Square. Human Rights Watch interviewed several women who took part in a rally in Tahrir Square on March 8 in celebration of International Women’s Day and who were sexually assaulted by men in civilian clothes. One woman said, “The group of men were getting closer to us, and [then they started] groping me in every part of my body….About 15 men ripped off my clothes…they ripped off my shirt and pants…. There were 20 of us…. No one bothered to help us.”
The Egyptian authorities have failed to condemn or investigate several well-publicized incidents of sexual assault by private actors, including the attack and sexual assault on the US journalist Lara Logan on February 11 by a mob of men in Tahrir square.On November 23, a mob assaulted the French journalist Caroline Sinz in the Tahrir square area. Human Rights Watch is unaware of any investigation into the attack. Sinz told Agence France-Presse:
We were filming in Mohammed Mahmud Street when we were mobbed by young people who were about 14 or 15… We were then assaulted by a crowd of men. I was beaten by a group of youngsters and adults who tore my clothes [and molested me in a way that] would be considered rape…Some people tried to help me but failed….It lasted three quarters of an hour before I was taken out. I thought I was going to die.
Select a WP Edit Snidget below to add it to your post or page. Yes, they can be used in content areas too!
is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his forty year family practice career. He is a contributor to and an endorser of the efforts of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and was a member of MindFreedom International, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
While running his independent clinic, he published over 400 issues of his Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter, which was emailed to a variety of subscribers. (They have not been archived at any website.) In the early 2000s, Dr Kohls taught a graduate level psychology course at the University of Minnesota Duluth. It was titled “The Science and Psychology of the Mind-Body Connection”.
Since his retirement, Dr Kohls has been writing a weekly column (titled “Duty to Warn”) for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota. He offers teaching seminars to the public and to healthcare professionals.
[/themify_box]
">Gary G Kohls George Monbiot[/caption]
Studied in Oxford University, columnist with The Guardian newspaper, also the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed, No Man’s Land, How Did We Get into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature and other.
Prof Johan Galtung was born in Oslo. He earned the PhD degree in mathematics at the University of Oslo in 1956, and in 1957 a year later completed the PhD degree in sociology at the same university.
Prof Johan Galtung received nine honorary doctorates in the fields of Peace studies, Future studies, Social sciences, Buddhism, Sociology of law, Philosophy, Sociology and Law.
State Councilor of St. Petersburg, Russia. Founding President, Global Harmony Association (GHA) since 2005. Honorary President, GHA since 2016. Director: Tetrasociology Public Institute, Russia. Philosopher, Sociologist and Peacemaker from Harmony. Author of more than 400 scientific publications, including 18 books in 1-12 languages. Author of Tetrism as the unity of Tetraphilosophy and Tetrasociology – science of social harmony, global peace and harmonious civilisation. Director, GHA Web portal “Peace from Harmony”. Initiator, Manager, Coauthor and Editor in Chief of the book project “Global Peace Science” (GPS).
[/themify_box]
First published at :
">Leo M Semashko Robert C Koehler[/caption]
writes for the Huffington Post, Common Dreams, OpEd News and TruthOut. He considers himself a “peace journalist.” He has been an editor at Tribune Media Services and a reporter, columnist and copy desk chief at Lerner Newspapers, Chicago. Koehler launched his column in 1999. Robert Koehler has received numerous writing and journalism awards over a 30-year career in USA. He writes about values and meaning with reverence for life. He is praised as “blatantly relevant” and “a hero of democracy”.
[/themify_box]
First published at :
">Robert C Koehler Robert J Burrowes PhD[/caption]
has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘
He has been a radio producer (Earthstar Radio, San Francisco), organized and worked with the homeless, and is an advocate/activist in the nonviolent protest movement for safe energy, human rights, and peaceful solutions.
He is USA Vice President of the World Constitution and Parliament Association whose mission is to build a parallel world body to the United Nations, an emerging Earth Federation with a Provisional World Parliament under the Earth Constitution.
[/themify_box]
First published at:
">Roger Kotila PhDProf Richard Falk[/caption]
an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.
Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).
[/themify_box]
First published at :
">Richard FalkDr Gray Corseri, PhD[/caption]
is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. He has published and posted articles, fiction and poems at hundreds of venues, including, TMS, The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine and Counterpunch.
He has published 2 novels and 2 collections of poetry, and his dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere. He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum and has taught in universities in the US and Japan, and in US public schools and prisons.
[/themify_box]
First published at :
">Gary CorseriAntonio Carlos Silva Rosa, Editor, TMS[/caption]
born 1946, is the editor of the pioneering Peace Journalism website, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, an assistant to Prof. Johan Galtung, and Secretary of the International Board of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
He completed the required coursework for a Ph.D. in Political Science-Peace Studies (1994), has a Masters in Political Science-International Relations (1990), and a B.A. in Communication (1988) from the University of Hawai’i.
Originally from Brazil, he lives presently in Porto, Portugal. Antonio was educated in the USA where he lived for 20 years; in Europe/India since 1994.
[/themify_box]
First published at :
">Antonio Carlos Silva Rosa
John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist, Associate Professor Emeritus, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory.
He is an Indian citizen & permanent resident of Australia and a scholar, an author, a social-policy critic, a frequent social wayfarer, a social entrepreneur and a journalist;He has been exploring, understanding and implementing the ideas of social-economy, participatory local governance, education, citizen-media, ground-journalism, rural-journalism, freedom of expression, bureaucratic accountability, tribal development, village development, reliefs & rehabilitation, village revival and other.
For Ground Report India editions, Vivek had been organising national or semi-national tours for exploring ground realities covering 5000 to 15000 kilometres in one or two months to establish Ground Report India, a constructive ground journalism platform with social accountability.
He has written a book “मानसिक, सामाजिक, आर्थिक स्वराज्य की ओर”on various social issues, development community practices, water, agriculture, his ground works & efforts and conditioning of thoughts & mind. Reviewers say it is a practical book which answers “What” “Why” “How” practically for the development and social solution in India.
worked as a mediator for the church in Belfast; as faculty at The School of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, and as Executive Director, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation. He has founded several Indian NGOs, is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
[/themify_box]
First published at -
">Vithal RajanRene Wadlow[/caption]
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
[/themify_box]
">Rene WadlowBaher Kamal[/caption]
[themify_box]
Baher Kamal
Egyptian-born, Spanish-national secular journalist. He is founder and publisher of Human Wrongs Watch. Kamal is a pro-peace, non-violence, human rights, coexistence defender, with more than 45 years of professional experience. With these issues in sight, he covered practically all professional posts, from correspondent to chief editor of dailies and international news agencies.
[/themify_box]
Credits :
">Baher KamalRosa Dalmiglio with Lama Mongolia[/caption]
She is a member of the China Council Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe (special art, culture and humanity), which touches the hearts of all people and portrays the strong willpower so encouraging to 60 million Chinese disabled persons.
Ms. Dalmiglio is Intermediary Agent of CICE, Centre International Cultural Exchange, a direct subsidiary of the Ministry of Culture, People’s Republic of China. CICE is a comprehensive institution engaged in cultural exchange programs, professional publication and presentation of cultural art works such as exhibits, receiving foreign art troupes and artists, holding international cultural research programs, and producing intercultural and interreligious documentary films.
She is a member of China Disabled Person’s Federation, CDPF. She is also a member of the International Women Federation, which is concerned with the financial ethics of women s enterprises in underdeveloped areas.
[/themify_box]
credits:
">Rosa Dalmiglio
Director, Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies.
A recipient of Cultural Doctorate of Philosophy of Economics from USA. He is an active member of various professional bodies, namely -
He participated and presented papers in various International/national/regional seminars, conferences etc.. He remained member of the Academic Council of Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar. An unwearied researcher has about 200 research papers published in various international and national journals of repute and 15 research monographs to his kitty. Besides, he has authored/co-authored /edited 15 books which have been well received and highly acclaimed during his three decades of professional career. He was honoured by various national and international awards, namely, Guru Draunacharya Samman, Vijay Rattan Award and so on.
Dr Ron Paul served in U.S. House of Representatives three different periods: first from 1976 to 1977, after he won a special election, then from 1979 to 1985, and finally from 1997 to 2013.
During his first term as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul founded the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE), a non-profit think tank dedicated to promoting principles of limited government and free-market economics. In 1984, Paul became the first chairman of the Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a conservative political group founded by Charles Koch and David Koch 'to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation.' CSE started a Tea Party protest against high taxes in 2002. In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy split into two new organizations, with Citizens for a Sound Economy being renamed as FreedomWorks, and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation becoming Americans for Prosperity. The two organizations would become key players in the Tea Party movement from 2009 onward.
Dr Paul proposed term-limit legislation multiple times, while himself serving a few terms in the House of Representatives. In 1984, he decided to retire from the House in order to run for the U.S. Senate, complaining in his House farewell address that 'Special interests have replaced the concern that the Founders had for general welfare.... It's difficult for one who loves true liberty and utterly detests the power of the state to come to Washington for a period of time and not leave a true cynic.'
He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry.
In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces.
[/themify_box]
Credits:
">Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D.Jason Hickel[/caption]
He is international consultant of the UN – FAO and international consultant for sustainable development and sustainable future of humankind of Universal State of the Earth - USE.
On 8th October 2016 he was appointed as The Chairman of the Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment protection Committee of the USE, the Supreme Council of Humanity - SCH from Athens, Greece and London, UK.
He is researcher working on: Nature; the Nature, Space and Environment protection; the Climate change system; System thinking; Globalization and global studies; Networking, Complexity and Swarm research: Sustainable Development and Sustainable Future of Humankind. He was among the pioneers researchers (1986 – 1994) to apply nature, space, and environment protection in a local community by activities we call today Local Agenda 21 Processes – a holistic program for survival of our civilization under new challenges of the third millennium.“Commencing from Local Community Sustainable Future and moving towards Sustainable Future of the Global Community of Humankind”.
He is independent researchers with many domestic and international publications and talks. Together with many researchers in co-operation worldwide within philosophy, operational research, global studies, case studies and complex problem solving research, system thinking, requisitely holism, networking and complexity, swarm research, integration and disintegration of matter and energy and universal upbringing, education and lifelong learning. He is contributing a systemic, requisitely holistic and a better understanding of the present. His latest research within the system theory, system thinking, networking, complexity and swarm research may provide a possible answer enabling people to better understand our world of humans.
During 2014 he completed 50 years of research work (1964 - 2014). This year he completed 50 years of been Dr. Vet. Med. Since 1986 he worked on the protection of Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment and completed 30 years of research.
For research on the climate change system and the book “System Thinking and Climate Change System (Against a big “Tragedy of Commons” of all of us), Ecimovic, Mayur, Mulej and co-authors, 2002, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize 2003. His work on “The Information Theory of Nature” was his second nomination for The Nobel Prize during 2007 in Physics. His third nomination for The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was for “The Environment Theory of the Nature”, published in the book “Three Applications of the System Thinking”, Ecimovic, 2010. Within last 10 years he has contributed trilogies: “The Nature”, “The Sustainable Future of Mankind” and “The Life 2017” – please see at: www.institut-climatechange.si
I grew up in Chile, got my medical degree there, began an academic career in 1970, and left for the USA due to the military coup in early 1974. My first job in the USA was working as a public nutrition professor in the international programme of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.
I started to travel to Africa in 1975, and worked a year in Cameroun in 1980 helping to prepare their five-year nutrition plan. I then moved to New Orleans, to Tulane University’s School of Public Health, and taught in the department of nutrition for ten years, before moving to Nairobi where I was an advisor in the Ministry of Health. Seven years there got me into extensive consulting in Africa, often on nutritional issues. In 1995 moved to Vietnam where I worked for two and a half years in the Ministry of Health as a senior primary health care advisor.
Many years of touching the reality on the ground, in Latin America, then the USA, then Africa and Asia, has made me understand that the real challenge is in the social and political determinants of malnutrition. I have devoted my writings and teaching to that. Over the years, I have found an important shift in my colleagues’ attitude and understanding towards acknowledging the basic causes of malnutrition. But yet I see little happening as a result. I submit that it is our guild’s lack of experience in the political arena that explains this dichotomy. I devote much of my energy to bridge this gap, and am a fervent advocate of empowering claim holders to demand needed changes from duty bearers. Nutrition is a perfect port of entry for that. Equity, social justice and people’s empowerment in a human rights sense is what really will make a difference.
There is no alternative but to deal with nutrition problems as indivisibly linked to social, political and environmental problems. We need to address them as such. The question is: are we all prepared to do that? The answer, in my view, decides whether we are part of the solution or part of the problem. Travelling and living in different parts of the world has reinforced my conviction that we need to get down from our academic ivory towers, and need to change the curricula of our young and upcoming colleagues, to give them the tools to act in such a context. To me, public health nutrition cannot be anything but that.
[/themify_box]
">Claudio Schuftan Dr MDProf. Ram Puniyani[/caption]
Migo
February 22, 2012 @ 7:13 AM
Either way it’s still an unlawful act. They have to know their limits.
dog bite attorney los angeles