Nearly a month after Egypt's longtime President Hosni Mubarak stepped down amid a wave of popular and mostly peaceful unrest aimed at his ouster and the institution of democratic reforms, female protestors were exposed to the new government's latest weapon - sexual humiliation. After Mubarak's resignation, Egypt's military, which had formerly chosen not to take part in the revolution, officially took control of the nation's political apparatus as well, until an agreed-upon constitution could be constructed and elections could be conducted (Amin). .
The protest occurred on March 9th in Tahrir Square. Eighteen other protests had already occurred there leading up to Mubarak's resignation. However, unlike the previous demonstrations, the Egyptian military targeted the protestors, calling for soldiers to drag down dozens of the demonstrators from the square and through the gates of the Egyptian Museum where they were subjected to abuse. These allegations did not surface for weeks but eventually came forth in an Amnesty International report (Amin). .
Female protestors were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges, and forced to submit to "virginity checks." At that time, Major Amr Imam admitted that 17 women had been arrested but denied that torture or "virginity checks" were ever conducted. However, a senior general has recently admitted that the tests were conducted and even defended the practice (Amin).
"The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," he said. "These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protestors in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and drugs. We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place. None of them were virgins" (Amin). .
Salwa Hosseini, a 20-year old hairdresser who was among the 17 female protestors arrested offered her account in the Amnesty report.
