Egypt: Safe zone turned violent

Lara Logan

CAIRO - For a moment, it seemed Egypt wasn't just throwing off its political shackles. Women long suffering from the scourge of sexual harassment reported that Cairo's Tahrir Square, command central of the uprising, had become a safe zone free of the groping and leering common in their country.

Now the reported attack on a senior United States television correspondent during the final night of the 18-day revolt has shown that the threat of violence against women in Egypt remains very real.

CBS has said its chief foreign correspondent, Lara Logan, went through a "brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating" by a frenzied mob in the square during Saturday's celebrations of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's ouster. Logan was released from a United States hospital and was recovering yesterday.

During the uprising, anti-Government protesters in Tahrir Square had been largely peaceful, except when coming under attack by police or pro-Mubarak gangs trying to break up the large crowds. The pro-Government forces also beat and harassed dozens of foreigners.

South African-born Logan originally made her name as a war correspondent for Britain's GMTV during the start of the US-led Afghan war in 2001 and subsequently reported on Iraq. She joined CBS News in 2002. Logan had been detained a week earlier by the Egyptian military for a day.

A journalist who tweeted derogatory comments about Logan as the news of her assault was breaking has been shamed into resigning from his fellowship at New York University's Centre on Law and Security. "Jesus Christ, at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and glorified we should at least remember her role as a major war monger," Nir Rosen wrote on Twitter. He later added, "Look, she was probably groped like thousands of other women."

"All the men were very respectful during the revolution," said Nawla Darwiche, an Egyptian feminist. "Sexual harassment didn't occur during the revolt. It occurred during that night. I was personally harassed that night."

During the uprising, women say they briefly experienced a "new Egypt," with strict social customs casually cast aside - at least among the protesters. Young women in jeans and tank tops smoked in public. Men and women mingled freely, unusual for a society where gender segregation in public is still common.

Egyptian women's rights campaigners now worry that the reprieve they experienced was a fluke, and that their society will quickly revert to oppressive social mores that leave women vulnerable to sexual violence, with little recourse.

- Independent, AP