A court in Egypt has handed a female human rights activist two years in jail over a video she posted on social media criticising the government for failing to protect women against sexual harassment. Fathy was arrested in May, days after she posted a minute Facebook video expressing her anger at poor public services at a local bank, sexual harassment by a taxi driver, and over a general deterioration in living conditions in the country.
Fathy is already in detention, awaiting trial in another case in which she is accused of being a member of the now banned April 6 youth movement, which played a role in the protests that forced president Hosni Mubarak from office. Egypt Amal Fathy is now facing a disgraceful sentence simply for her courage to speak out against sexual harassment. This is an outrageous case of injustice, she should be commended for her courage, not sentenced to prison. The problem of sexual harassment in Egypt gained worldwide attention during and after the uprising that toppled Mubarak, when women were harassed, groped โ and in some cases, beaten and sexually assaulted โ during mass protests.
Some 60 percent of women in Egypt said they had been victims of some form of sexual harassment during their lives in a report from UN Women and Promundo. A study released last year by the Thomson Reuters Foundation ranked Cairo as the most dangerous megacity in the world for women. In , the government passed a law making sexual harassment punishable by up to five years in prison, but it is not widely enforced, particularly when it comes to what are considered milder forms of street harassment.
Egypt passed a law in July giving the state powers to block social media accounts and penalise journalists held to be publishing fake news.
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