A campaign against sexual harassment has recorded 223 cases of sexual harassment in Cairo during the three days of the holy Islamic Eid al-Fitr from Friday to Sunday.
Shoft Ta7rosh (I Saw Harassment), said Sunday in its final report on Eid days that its team of volunteers had run into 132 cases of verbal harassment, 90 cases of physical abuses and two mob harassment incidents.
This Eid has seen the highest rates of harassments in Downtown Cairo compared to the same period over the past years since the campaign launched in 2012, the statement said.
The surge in the phenomenon comes to defy intensified efforts by NGOs and youth initiatives, the report said, adding that sexual harassment and related physical violations against women are exacerbating across the country with little respect for the rule of law.
The ages of female victims of sexual assailants had dropped remarkably this year, said the report, which revealed that the majority of women and girls subjected to the violations had declined to file official police complaints, only content with instant deterring reaction.
And as the rate of violations escalated, the report said harassers are also growing fiercer and undeterred in their attitude.
The scope of the security presence was highly inconsistent, as the Interior Ministry departments gave clashing counts of harassment cases, according to the report. But Egypt’s National Council for Women (NCW) believes the phenomenon has receded.
Mervat al-Telawy, chairman of the NCW, said the harassments rate had largely dropped, attributing the decline to what she described as “continuous contacts between the council and the Interior Minister in order to combat the phenomenon”.
In statements on Sunday, Telawy said that what she described as the “intensive” deployment of “pedestrian and mounted patrols, secret agents and female police agents” by the Interior Ministry to track sexual harassment has “spread an atmosphere of assuredness among the citizens and prevented any incidents”.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
