Egyptian Salafi preacher Ahmed Mahmoud Abdulla — known as Abou Islam — recently made remarks justifying sexual violence against female protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, claiming that women who join protests are asking “to get raped”. The preacher, who owns private religious television channel Al-Ummah, has previously stirred controversy when he burnt a Bible outside the US Embassy in Cairo during last year’s protests over anti-Islam film the Innocence of Muslims.
In a video posted online last Wednesday, Abdulla said that women who join the protests are “either crusaders who have no shame or widows who have noone to control them”. He also described them as “devils”, and added that “they talk like monsters”.
A protester chants during a march against sexual harassment
A few days before he made the controversial statements, at least 19 women were reportedly gang raped in Tahrir Square during a Friday protest marking the anniversary of the January, 2011 mass uprising that toppled authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak. One woman was hospitalised after attackers used a knife to cut her genitals.
Risking stigma and breaking an age-old taboo on sexual violence, many of the women have since spoken out, giving disturbing testimonies of the attacks in interviews published in newspapers and broadcast on radio and television. In a show of solidarity and support for the rape victims, hundreds of women protesters meanwhile staged a rally in downtown Cairo on Wednesday, protesting sexual harassment and demanding an end to sexual violence.
“Women and girls are a red line,” the protesters chanted. Some of the demonstrators brandished kitchen knives to send a message that they were capable of defending themselves.
Sexual harassment has plagued Egypt for decades. In 2008, a study by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights (ECWR) revealed that more than 80 per cent of Egyptian women have been subjected to sexual harassment. Since Egypt’s revolution two years ago, there has been a surge in sexual violence against women, and rights activists say that harassment over the past two years has become “more violent and more organised”. The warn that the phenomenon has now reached “epidemic proportion”.
Nehad Abou Komsan, Chairperson of ECWR said that she believes the rise in the number of reported incidents since the revolution may be due to the fact that “in the freer post-revolution environment, more women are willing to speak out against harassment”. In the past, victims of harassment or sexual assault rarely reported the incidents for fear of being blamed or stigmatised. Since the revolution however, both women and the media have broken their silence. In recent months, the issue has been publicly debated a number of times in TV talk shows and has been tackled by local dailies.
The first time such assaults were reported in the press was during Egypt’s 2005 presidential elections, when female journalists were molested and stripped by what were believed to be security forces in plain clothes hired to attack the journalists. The following year, a brutal mob attack on girls celebrating Eid Al Fitr in downtown Cairo sent shockwaves across the nation, bringing the issue of harassment to light.
On 11 February 2011 — the night former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was forced out — CBS Correspondent Lara Logan was sexuallyassaulted by a mob of 200 to 300 frenzied men in Tahrir Square, as tens of thousands of jubilant opposition activists celebrated Mubarak’s ouster. Since then, a series of sexual assaults by mobs have been reported, targeting mainly prominent female activists and journalists.
The wave of assaults has led rights campaigners to infer that the “targeted and systematic attacks are being used by the state to keep women away from the protests”.On 8 March 2011, scores of women demanding equal rights at a rally marking International Women’s Day were verbally abused and shoved by bearded men who shouted at them to go home. The following day, several female protesters arrested by the army near Tahrir Square were electrocuted and subjected to humiliating “virginity checks” performed by a male doctor. Samira Ibrahim, one of the young protesters subjected to such a test filed a lawsuit against the then-ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. She won the case and the military promised that such tests would not be performed on female detainees in military prisons in the future. She however, lost a second case against the military doctor she had accused of performing the tests, who was acquitted by a military court. In December 2011, another female protester was stripped down to her bra, dragged by soldiers and beaten during a protest outside the parliament building. A video of the “girl in the blue bra” went viral on the internet , provoking a public outcry and a wave of anti-military protests.
Sexual harassment has increased since protests calling for “the downfall of the Islamist regime” began at the end of last month. The surge in sexual violence in the protest areas has given rise to informal groups like Tahrir Bodyguard and Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment/Assault— initiatives set up by volunteers and rights activists who patrol Tahrir Square during protests, keep track of sexual assault incidents and report them to rights organisations. The volunteers also try and protect female protesters by forming human chains around them or by coming to the rescue of women who are under attack. In their neon vests and helmets, Tahrir Bodyguard members are easy to spot.
Many activists believe that paid thugs are responsible for the spike in recent harassment, which they say is being used to keep female protesters out of Tahrir Square and away from the Presidential Palace.
In a press release issued last Wednesday, Amnesty International stated that rights activists believe that “the state may be behind the organised and coordinated attacks which are aimed at silencing women and excluding them from public spaces.” In most of the assault incidents, similar tactics have been used by the perpetrators to “intimidate and degrade the women”, the statement added.
Morsi’s Islamist supporters meanwhile blame the attacks on former regime loyalists who, they say,” hire thugs to tarnish the image of Islamists”.
“Violence was used by the old regime to silence dissenters. Now, old regime remnants are still using the same methods to further their interests and turn people against the new regime,” argued Walid El Garf, an interpreter with State TV and supporter of President Mohamed Morsi.
Rights activists have called on the government to bring the perpetrators to justice, asking President Morsi to take urgent action to end the culture of impunity.
The Egyptian president has been quick to respond to the call. Last week, he announced via his official Twitter account that a sexual harassment law was currently being drafted and would soon be ratified by the Cabinet. Prime Minister Hesham Qandil has also annnounced that his cabinet was working with civil society organisations and the state-sponsored National Council for Women (NCW) to finalise the law. Mervat El Tellawy, Secretary General of the NCW, has meanwhile urged victims of sexual assault to report incidents to the Council so that legal measures may be taken against the perpetrators. An Interior Ministry source has also said that surveillance cameras would soon be installed in the main squares and on downtown streets to monitor incidents of sexual harassment and assault.
While the increased violence against women has been cause for growing concern, the long-awaited new legislation, the increased willingness of women to speak out and the growing number of NGOs fighting harassment (either by spreading awareness about it, encouraging women to speak out or protecting women during protests) are all encouraging signs of positive change to come. Rights activists welcome the change but insist that more needs to be done to end gender-based discrimination.
“Changing the attitudes of men and women can only take place through education and awareness campaigns, ” said activist Azza Kamel of Fouada Watch, an NGO that has established a round-the-clock hot line for victims to report incidents of sexual harassment, verbal abuse or assaults against women. Kamel also advocates training of the police, traditionally known to take harassment reports lightly . “But above all”she said, there must be zero tolerance for those who incite violence against women (referring to the recent comments by Salafi preacher Abou Islam.)
“Such extremists must be silenced. Incitement is as big a crime as the assault itself”, Kamel added.
Journalist Shahira Amin resigned from her post as deputy head of state-run Nile TV in February 2011. Read why she resigned from the “propaganda machine” here.
The European Court of Human Rightsdeemed today (15 January) that a woman working for British Airways was unfairly discriminated against for her religion. Nadia Eweida was fired by BA in 2006 for refusing to stop wearing her crucifix visibly. Judges ruled that Eweida’s rights under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights were violated. Three other Christians who had taken their employees to court lost their cases. Shirley Chaplin, whose employer also stopped her wearing crucifix necklaces, Lillian Ladele, disciplined after refusing to conduct same-sex civil partner ceremonies — and Gary McFarlane, a marriage councillor fired for saying he might object to offering sex advice to gay couples.
Aaron Swartz’s suicide prompted calls for cyber law reform
The suicide of US activistAaron Swartzon 11 January has prompted calls to reform computer crime laws in America. The 26 year old was awaiting trial, charged with 13 felony counts of wire fraud and hacking two years ago. Swartz had downloaded millions of academic papers from online archive JSTOR and was due to face trial in April, for which he could have been jailed for decades and faced massive fines. Calls for amendments to The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act have been widespread, with critics alleging that certain internet hacking laws are too vague and broad, and impose overly harsh penalties.
On 9 January, Iran’s Supreme Court ratified the death penalty of five Ahwazi (Arab-Iranian) human rights defenders. Hadi Rachedi, Hashim Shabani Nejad, Mohammad Ali Amuri Nejad, Jaber Al-Bushoke and his brother Mokhtar Al-Bushoke were arrested by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and National Security in the spring of 2011. They were charged with spawning mischief, threatening national security and inciting propaganda against the Islamic Republic. The activists had been protesting for their right to speak Arabic, rather than the national language of Persian – a right that is written into Iranian constitution. They were allegedly tortured into giving false confessions in detention.
App developers Tencent have apologised to users of social media app WeChat, after the programme appeared to be censoring controversial terms globally. Tencent, China’s most widely used internet portal, blamed a “technical glitch” after it had blocked terms such as Southern Weekend and Falun Gong, a banned group in China often referred to as a sect. Activists have voiced concern that authorities are hacking the app, in order to increase surveillance on some of its 200million users. WeChat has subscribers in the UK and America, and will soon be launched across Asia.
US Vice President Joe Biden met with the president of the Entertainment Software Association on Friday, to discuss the gaming industry’s influence over violence, following a school shooting in Connecticut that prompted calls for reforms on gun policy. Biden’s White House meeting aimed to establish whether America was undergoing a “coarsening of our culture”, discussing how to eliminate the culture of violence, a happening the gaming industry is frequently blamed for. The National Rifle Association (NRA) had accounted the rate of gun crime in America to media and video game violence, which the gaming industry refuted, expressing fears that they could become a scapegoat in the Connecticut debate.
Even rainstorms can be sensitive in China. The recent storm in Beijing which killed at least 77 people caused the censors to come out in force, with newspapers told to can coverage and online accounts of the deluge snipped.
But with 500 million internet users, the obvious question is, how does China do it? What are the mechanics of China’s internet censorship?
It makes things simpler if we divide the censorship first into two camps: censoring the web outside China and censoring domestic sites.
American journalist James Fallows very readable account of how China censors the outside web explains: “Depending on how you look at it, the Chinese government’s attempt to rein in the internet is crude and slapdash or ingenious and well crafted.”
Briefly, this is what happens.
Censoring incoming web pages
The public security ministry is the main government body which oversees censorship of the outside Internet through its Golden Shield Project.
The key to their control is the fact that unlike many other countries, China is only connected to the outside internet through three links (or choke points as Fallows calls them) — one via Japan in the Beijing-Tianjin-Qingdao area, one also via Japan in Shanghai and one in Guangzhou via Hong Kong. At each one of these choke points there is something called a “tapper” which copies each website request and incoming web page and sends it to a surveillance computer for checking. This means that browsing non-local websites in China can sometimes be frustratingly slow.
There are four ways for a surveillance computer to block your request.
The DNS (Domain Name System) block: When you enter a web page, the DNS looks up the address of that page in computer language (the IP address). China has a list of IP addresses it blocks, if your web page is on that IP address, the DNS is instructed to give back a bad address and you will get a “site not found” error message.
Connection Reset: Another the way the government prevents you seeing one of its blacklisted sites is not to return a bad address but to constantly reset the request, which is slightly more insidious since this kind of error can occur naturally. If it happened outside China you could press reset and the chances are the next time you would be successful. But in China the reset is intentional and however many times you resend the request you will get a “The connection has reset.”
URL keyword block: To cast its net even wider, the tappers also check the web address. If it contains any banned words, say “Falun Gong” or “Dalai Lama” the request is sent into an infinite loop, you never reach the site and your connection times out.
Content filtering: In this technique the content of web pages is scanned for banned words, with the connection timing out if any blacklisted words are found. This could for example, allow you to browse the Guardian website, but not access some of the new stories.
Censorship technology is continuously becoming more sophisticated, and words and IP addresses go on and off the blacklists.
Index contacted Jed Crandall, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of New Mexico and whose research has focused on Chinese internet censorship, to ask him if there had been much change to the above in the four years since Fallows’s article. Here’s what he said:
“It seems like filtering the content of the web pages using internet routers was not working well for the censors, and they even seemed to be devoting less resources to it over time as we did our experiments,” he told Index by email interview. “They still block IP addresses, DNS addresses, and do keyword filtering on GET requests [URL keyword block].”
Censoring domestic websites
Far more of a challenge to the Chinese government is keeping its homegrown internet in check. And this it does mostly by making sure the private companies that run most of the Chinese web self-censor by issuing threats, “vaguely-worded” laws and, in the case of emergency breaking stories, day-to-day directives.
Censoring professional content
Web companies self-censor in many different ways. Content which they produce themselves is “cleansed” first by the writer and then by editors if necessary. There are few specific censorship guidelines; it is more of an acquired habit of knowing where to draw the line based on fear of punishment. American scholar Perry Link wrote an eloquent essay back in 2003 — read it here — about how Chinese censorship is like an anaconda in the chandelier ready to pounce if someone oversteps that line:
The Chinese government’s censorial authority in recent times has resembled not so much a man-eating tiger or fire-snorting dragon as a giant anaconda coiled in an overhead chandelier. Normally the great snake doesn’t move. It doesn’t have to. It feels no need to be clear about its prohibitions. Its constant silent message is ‘You yourself decide,’ after which, more often than not, everyone in its shadow makes his or her large and small adjustments–all quite ‘naturally.’
Censoring user-produced content
This is where it gets really interesting.
“Social media is more dynamic and fluid than traditional online content, so the censors have to be creative in how they control social media,” says Crandall.
Banned topics and sensitive terms are deleted by hand by armies (literally) of paid internet “police”. This, from a paper published here in June by a team of researchers at Harvard University:
The size and sophistication of the Chinese government’s program to selectively censor the expressed views of the Chinese people is unprecedented in recorded world history. Unlike in the US, where social media is centralized through a few providers, in China it is fractured across hundreds of local sites, with each individual site employing up to 1,000 censors. Additionally, approximately 20,000–50,000 Internet police and an estimated 250,000–300,000 “50 cent party members” (wumao dang) are employed by the central government.
More evidence for the lack of a hardcopy list of banned topics is that different online companies seem to censor different things.
Crandall adds:
One thing we’ve noticed in our research is that what various companies censor seems to vary widely from company to company, and there doesn’t seem to be any obvious ‘master list’ of what companies are supposed to censor. They seem to make up their own lists based on what they think their liabilities would be if the government had to intervene.
For example, censoring in Tibet and Qinghai (a largely Tibetan province) is much stricter than in eastern parts of the country.
Latest trends
Recent reports on Chinese internet censorship have offered some surprising results. First, the Harvard paper referred to above analysed Chinese-language blogs and found that censors were targeting material that could have incited protests or others types of mass action, leaving material critical of the government uncensored.
A recent University of Hong Kong study on Weibo (China’s wildly popular version of Twitter) posts found that the list of words was changing constantly.
“What we are finding is a constantly morphing list of keywords, a cat-and-mouse contest between people and censors,” King-wa Fu, one of the study’s researchers, told the Economist last month.
There might be more to it than a simple catch-up. According to Crandall, censorship can be used as a sophisticated tool to control the news. In a paper titled Whiskey, Weed, and Wukan on the World Wide Web: On Measuring Censors’ Resources and Motivations, when a news story reflects badly on the government, posts on it are censored, but when that news story has been turned around to a good story, the word is unblocked.
“It appears that censorship was applied only long enough for the news about Wukan to change from sensitive news to a story of successful government intervention to reach a peaceful resolution to the problem,” the paper’s authors write.
(Wukan is the name of a village in southern China where huge clashes between the police and locals occurred over illegal land grabs late last year. The government eventually caved into the villagers’ demands and then turned the story in one of a provincial government victory.)
The Future
Chinese censorship has to move with the times, particularly now there are 500 million Chinese online, many of whom are ardent microbloggers.
Crandall believes that the government is looking into how to manipulate social media to influence the news.
I think what the future of internet censorship holds is more emphasis on control and less emphasis on blocking content. It’s very difficult to block some specific topic, but if you can slow down spread of news of the topic at some times and speed up spread of news about the topic at other times you can use that to your advantage to control how issues play out in the news cycles.
MORE ON THIS STORY:
Blogger Wen Yunchao wrote for Index on Censorship magazine in 2010 about the art of Chinese censorship. Read his article here.
Also writing for our magazine, Southern Weekend columnist Xiao Shu discusses the repressive and chaotic nature of China’s internet censorship here.
Read Chinese author and blogger Han Han’s essay about publishing and censorship in China here.
Writing for Index on Censorship magazine in 2007, the late Stan Cohen argued that child pornography and jihadi violence were testing the limits of tolerance (more…)
