Shahira Amin“Even when I have death threats, I feel ‘no, this is my mission in life, if I die, this is the price to pay’ ” Shahira Amin is an independent journalist with a prolific career and collaborates with numerous publications. She is an active defender of women’s rights. Shahira created a stir during the 2011 revolution by resigning as a news anchor from Nile TV in protest of the station’s treatment of events. |
While interviewed, she provides context to the harassment women have come to expect from certain members of the military authorities and their agents. She also talks about her resignation from Nile TV during the height of the revolution. Twitter: @sherryamin13 |
Interview
Interviewed in English in Cairo in spring 2012 by Tatiana Philiptchenko.
Q: Are Egyptian women benefiting from the 2011 Revolution? Yes and no because of course this is our revolution too and as you saw women were involved in the revolution. They were in Tahrir Square not only in the traditional role, but performing security checks at the entrances, distributing food, treating the wounded in the makeshifts hospitals but also leading the protests. A lot of the women were on the podium chanting and getting the men to chant after them. It was the women who started the revolution, Asmaa Mahfouz[1] when she posted the videos of police brutality (against Khaled Said). He was the young activist that really triggered this revolution via Facebook and Twitter. This is the yes part. The shocking part after the revolution, we found efforts to push the women back into the shadows, to marginalize them and sideline them. The fact that no woman was invited to take part in the “wise men committee” to draft amendments to the constitution, this was shocking. In the new parliament women are flagrantly under-represented. All this despite the fact that I saw an unprecedented level of activism amongst women. They started joining political parties and campaigning and mobilizing in a way that I have not seen in all the years of the Mubarak regime. But nevertheless, if you look at the current government you just have a female minister who is a hold over of the old regime. No other women in the cabinet. There’s also an increase of sexual harassment, sexual assaults on women protesters. The “girl in the blue bra”[2] of course has become both a symbol of the struggle for equality and freedom, and of the failure of the Arab spring. It is good and bad: the fact that women came out in thousands to protest and denounce the brutality of the security forces against women protesters, and specifically against women journalists who get humiliated and intimidated, is good. I find that targeting women journalists is something systematic in Egypt. It started in 2005 with women journalists covering the elections. They had their clothes torn off, their veils torn off their heads, they were insulted, they were called prostitutes and liars. That year, a woman will be on her way to cover the elections and she will be hijacked in a taxi and intimidated for example. Now in 2012, the same tactics are being used against women journalists covering current developments. In one of the “Million Marches” in Cairo the reporter who was covering it in Tahrir Square was assaulted. She had her clothes torn off by a mob and her picture was taken. Next day it was in all the papers so it was like a message that “this is what happens”. This was a Coptic girl reporting for a satellite Coptic channel and she was sexually molested. They made sure that the message was out in the media. This shouldn’t happen in a conservative country like ours where a girl’s chastity is the family’s honor. It tarnishes her reputation and ruins her chances of marriage. You could tell that this was a warning message to others, a way of intimidation. I was in Tahrir on the 25th of January 2012 (first anniversary of the revolution). I went up to speak on the podium. I thought we would have a second revolution to oust the military dictatorship. I saw people celebrating instead. I felt very let down. I told them from the podium: “What are you celebrating? What have we achieved?”. The minute I came down from the podium, I had a few men who came to grope me and touch me in all the wrong parts. It is not just me. Bothaina Kamel[3] the presidential candidate was mugged a few times. Nawara Negm[4] the outspoken activist who is a fierce critic of the military regime, got beaten and molested. It has happened repeatedly. It is repeated and systematic: targeting women activists and journalists. When I say yes and no: when women got out on the streets in December 2011[5] to express their outrage at that incident (blue bra incident) because this is totally unacceptable: we were chanting “the girls are the red line, not the military”. We found criticism and denunciation from the head of the Secretary of the Women’s Committee in the Freedom and Justice Party (Muslim Brotherhood’s new party) Dr. Manal Abu El Hassan. She said: “Why are these women out there expressing their outrage? Why didn’t they get their husbands, sons and brothers to do it on their behalf” which is shocking. She’s working in a political party and she is denouncing us. This is a sign of worse things to come (If these are the views of the Muslim Brotherhood who has the highest representation in parliament). Also, when the Islamists won the majority in parliament: I spoke with someone of the Justice and Freedom Party. She said, don’t worry we are all for women’s rights, we will encourage women to go to the workplace, we will not impose the veil on women. She tried to reassure me. Then I tried to talk with her about female genital mutilation (FGM) because I knew there was a hot debate about it in parliament. So when I asked her about female mutilation, she said “This will be up to a doctor to decide”. So this is very worrying for me, because FGM is not even an Islamic practice. The Christians in Egypt cut their girls too. So it is good and bad. Good because the women are out there, they feel important. Bad because there’s a tide against them from the military, from the state and from those from the Islamist stream. This is a patriarchal conservative society. They feel that the women’s place is not in politics. For the women to get anywhere, it is men’s attitudes that need to change. The virginity tests conducted on female protesters were made to humiliate and break them. What I got from the army generals was: “What were they doing there anyway?”. These are girls that camped out in Tahrir. I said this is the biggest thing of all. Q: Where were you when you heard the announcement that Mubarak stepped down and how did you feel about it? I was at home following the news. I stayed in Tahrir from the 3rd of February until the 11th of February 2011. I had just come back home to change when the news broke that Mubarak stepped down. I went immediately back to the square (laughs). I spent my days in Tahrir Square but I didn’t sleep there. I came back home every night to sleep and shower. You know, I was deputy head of Nile TV and I quit on the 2nd of February 2011 (the day of the “Battle of the Camels”) because they didn’t include that important event in the news on Nile TV. They gave me the news to read: I said there’s no mention of the “Battle of the Camels”. I just saw it on Al Arabiya channel and they said, “we have clear instructions not to mention it, don’t you dare”. They also refused to give me a video camera to go and cover the protests in Tahrir. So that was how I made my decision if. I cannot tell the world about history in the making in my own backyard. As a journalist I felt my hands were tied, I couldn’t report it, so I quit. I felt liberated. The second day I was in Tahrir where it was all happening to get eyewitness accounts of history being made. Q: Why did you quit Nile TV? I also quit because of a distorted coverage Nile TV was giving. I quit because they were spreading propaganda lies saying that the Tahrir youth were foreign agents. Saying that there was foreign meddling inciting violence, inciting instability. I was on air for just one day during the Revolution and I couldn’t take it. They were giving me press releases to read from the ministry. I just couldn’t agree with what the state TV was broadcasting. I felt it was committing career suicide to stay on state TV. I would have lost my credibility if I did what they asked. I had worked so hard for so long trying as far as possible to be impartial. The fact that we broadcasted in English, they let us do it. It’s different from the Arabic channels. We had more freedom because the masses don’t watch the news in English. I went back to Tahrir to celebrate. It was a moment of euphoria when we heard that Mubarak finally stepped down. I celebrated all night. Q: How did this moment affect you? I feel I had my own revolution in my life. My life went upside down since the revolution. I thought I was quitting, that it was the end of my career as a journalist and that I would have a quiet life. Instead, this past year has been a year of emotional upheavals, ups and downs. One minute we had a victory like the moment when I got the scoop during the first admission by the general that they (the Egyptian army) carried out the virginity tests. I was also the only journalist that got access to Maikel Nabil[6] the blogger in jail. I was allowed into prison to interview him on his 43rd day of hunger strike and it was also his 26th birthday. So, these were some very exciting moments for me but also some moments of extreme despair when we felt our revolution was stolen from us. The fact that a year on we feel that the same regime is still in place and we see a risk of having the gains that women have made in this country being reversed. A lot of people in my life were affected by all of this. Q: How has the revolution changed your life? Since the revolution I became a freelance journalist. I still have a voice on a local platform but I also have an international voice. I’ve been writing for CNN, for Index on Censorship, for blogs and getting heard. I’ve spoken in conferences around the world about the Arab spring. I feel liberated because the world is my playground and now I am being recognized around the world. Before I think I was more of a local journalist. It has opened up a new world for me but it is also a huge challenge. The important thing is that I have lost the fear. I didn’t grow up here, so I was never repressed like my colleagues initially. I always went the extra mile in my reporting, even under Mubarak. I was the first to tackle taboo issues. I was the one to cover the Sudanese refugees who got massacred in Tahrir Square in Cairo. I was the first to bring the taboo on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and talk about it to my award-winning documentary when nobody was talking about FGM. I also talked about the Copts and the sectarian clashes. I then interviewed the Muslim Brotherhood when they were outlawed during the Mubarak regime. I even had at that time people from the state security calling me the “anti-Egyptian” because if you are not pro-regime, you are anti-state. Because I interviewed Mohamed Morsi (Muslim Brotherhood) in 2010, someone introduced me as “Shahira the anti-Egyptian”. I was always bold, but even more now, because I feel maybe I would have been too intimidated under Mubarak to come out with a story on the virginity tests. It’s a new found freedom for me. I was kind of free but am freer now. There’s less fear. (continued on the right) |
Shahira Amin resigns from Nile TV during the revolution
The video clip below sheds light on the events surrounding Sahira's resignation from Nile TV.
There’s a determination to continue to bring the truth now. To challenge the authorities. To hold them accountable. I think the revolution did that, it emboldened me even further.
Even when I have death threats, I feel “no, this is my mission in life, if I die, this is the price to pay”. I see the young revolutionaries putting their lives on the line in Tahrir Square and I feel ashamed that I am 52 years and I might be scared. Q: Do you believe Egyptian women will have more rights or less rights in light of the Revolution? I think the momentum that happened in Tahrir is irreversible. The fact that women were out there, they refused to be pushed back. I can sense it: they are women from all different fields, from different backgrounds, of different faiths and ideologies. I can tell that women are determined to continue this struggle but it is not going to be easy because on the other hand we have the Islamists. We don’t know in the end who will write the constitution. They want to keep Article 2 which means that legislation will be drawn from Sharia Law which I feel treats women like second class citizens on issues of divorce and inheritance. So, I think the Revolution was to have a secular civil state but they scrapped the quotas already that reserved 68 parliament seats for women (under the Mubarak regime). They are also calling to abolish the health decree that criminalizes Female Genital Mutilation. This is catastrophic because this procedure scars women physically and emotionally for life. The excuse is that this is a Mubarak era decree and it imposes foreign values on Egypt. There are few gains for women but right now we are worried because we see the attack on civil society organizations and they were the ones pushing for greater equality for women. And now these foreign NGOs[7] are adopting a wait and see approach because they are scared. They were working on sexual harassment, on domestic abuse, on educational opportunities for girls, on economic empowerment of women but now because of this attack on civil society NGOs we don’t know what will happen. There are a lot of concerns. There’s a fact that women have it in them, they want to continue the revolution but the tide is against them Q: In your view what are the factors that are contributing to slow down women’s development in Egypt? The culture. It is a male dominated country. It’s conservative, it pushes back women basically. Culture is a big impediment. These are deep-rooted social norms and traditions that won’t change overnight. They are entrenched in society. It will take a long time to alter that. There’s a lot of stereotyping. In Egypt, women’s role is seen in a certain way. They can be teachers or journalists but we don’t see them in politics. The reality on the ground is different. In the lower strata lots of women are the bread earners in the family. These views can only change with education and media awareness campaigns. We have to work more on the men. If a man doesn’t want to marry a woman who’s not circumcised, then the girls will want to be circumcised. Q: Have you been harassed yourself and why in your view there is sexual harassment in Egypt? Not one woman in Egypt has not been harassed in one way or another of any age or any kind of dress (clothing). In one way or another we have verbal abuse, we have groping, especially if you use public transport. When I am in the elevator: every time someone tries to touch me I punch them back, it’s a reflex. There were high expectations from this revolution, but they have not materialized, so people are angry. Q: Does someone like you get more harassed? Yes, because harassment has to do with anger and sexual frustration, political and economic frustrations. On the economic level, men see you as competing with them so they want you to go back home. They need the jobs for themselves. When I was a student studying at the American University in Cairo in the late seventies, there was far less harassment. It was also done in a more subtle way like a comment that will make you even smile. In these days, I used to go to university in shorts without any problem. Now, you don’t want people to look at you. You have to cover up. You don’t want to blame yourself because you were not dressed properly and ended up getting harassed. Q: What has changed? This came with Egyptians going to work in the Gulf countries with the oil boom. They imported back the Wahhabism and Mubarak let it happen and encouraged it. They have imported this culture. We have always been moderate people as Egyptians. With the Saudi satellite channels infiltrating our airspace brainwashing people, they talk about every aspect of your life from how to cook a chicken to which left or right foot, to enter your house. Ridiculous stuff. All of this. The death threats to belly dancers. They scared them. They paid loads of money to them to stay at home. They took them out of the profession. We now only have foreign belly dancers. They permeated our culture: the media, the arts. Slowly but surely, they chipped away at the culture. It’s good to have awareness programs about the harassment but I don’t see it as the solution. The solution is re-educating, particularly the men. Showing them if it was your sister, your wife, will you want her to be treated this way? And also teaching women how to protect themselves. Q: In Egypt women are still subjected to Female Genital Mutilation. Do you think the revolution will help with matters like this one? I am really worried. It was my personal little victory when we had this law passed (against FGM). I had been to all the villages with the activists when they had the village declarations. Villagers were coming out signing. When this started in the mid-nineties the rate of FGM was so high: it was 96% of Egyptian women being cut. We managed within few years to bring it down to 74% which is still incredibly high. If we don’t keep up the awareness campaigns, if the law is abolished, I am afraid we will have more deaths, more emotional scars, more complications. This affects everything in life if a girl is deprived from a God given thing that men want to deprive her from. We have to keep up the fight and let people know that this is not even Islamic. It is not practiced in Saudi Arabia or Yemen. It’s practiced in some sub-Saharan African countries. We have to use arguments like: “The Prophet didn’t circumcise his daughters. It’s not in the Koran“. Awareness campaigns need to be done through religious leaders and the community (someone people can trust) because now they all are very skeptical of the foreign agenda, of the foreign values that Suzanne Mubarak tried to impose. Q: What actions do women have to take in order to gain political power and more place in society? Media has to give the right messages and not stereotype women. Education is also very important because this is something you teach at school that boys and girls have equal rights. Women’s agendas are being drowned. Women need to be aware of their rights. Lots of Egyptian women don’t know about their rights. This was the role of civil society: teaching people about their rights but the actual leaders said they were fomenting unrest. The NGOs that they closed down were NGOs about democracy and human rights. They don’t want women to know about their rights. We are in a very complicated situation. It’s doesn’t look good. We are at the crossroads but I am still very optimistic. The girls are more serious because of the upbringing. If there’s not enough food, it’s the boy who gets the food. In poor families, the boys are pampered. The girls are responsible for household choirs and their siblings. I have seen it with my eyes. They are deprived from childhood and given the second choice. This also makes them stronger. I see the women as the future leaders of this country. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmaa_Mahfouz [2] The girl in the blue bra is a female protester who was beaten and whose clothes were thorn of by officers in Cairo in December 2011;this was recorded on camera and shown around the world. It became an iconic symbol of the mistreatment of Egyptian women during the Revolution. More info can be find in the following article: http://muftah.org/beating-a-female-protestor-in-cairo/ [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bothaina_Kamel [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nawara_Negm [5] http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/12/20111220132113595450.html [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maikel_Nabil_Sanad [7] http://www.globalintegrity.org/blog/egypt-ngo-funding |