“Egyptian authorities seem to be trying to break the regional record of the worst violations of LGBT rights, while the international community maintains an appalling silence,” says Rasha Younes, sexual minority rights researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW). The suicide in exile of Sarah Hegazi, the lesbian girl who had been raped and tortured during her imprisonment in Egypt, raised a wave of outrage that, however, lasted very few days, as it is almost always the case. And so, among general indifference, “Egypt has continued without batting an eyelid to persecute and assault LGBT people purely and simply for who they are,” as evidenced by the 15 stories of shocking brutality collected by HRW itself.
The nightmare in many cases starts suddenly: cops come and stop you on the street, in a restaurant, while you’re waiting in line at the bank. They arrest you because your appearance does not accord with gender expectations, you are too masculine, too effeminate, the way you dress or move makes you look trans or homosexual. “We clean the streets of all the faggots,” the officers explained when they first arrested Salim, a 25-year-old man. “A dozen policemen began to beat me from all sides,” tells the young man, “Then they took me to a tiny room, where they made me stand in the dark, with my hands and feet tied with ropes, for three days. I couldn’t go to the bathroom: I peed on me, I even defecated in my clothes.”
VIRGINITY TESTS
Aya, a 28-year-old LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual) rights activist, was arrested after an anti-inflation rally and charged with “membership in a terrorist group for the purpose of interfering with the constitution.” She too suffered a very violent group beating by policemen, who then interrogated her for 12 hours straight and locked her in a cell with 45 other women. But what she remembers with particular terror are the so-called “virginity tests”: forms of torture that Egyptian security forces regularly use to psychologically destroy women who dare to protest against the regime.
“A policeman forced me to undress in front of his colleagues,” tells Aya, “I was sobbing, but he made me spread my legs and looked inside my vagina, then into my anus. He forced me to shower in front of him.” Another time, “a policewoman made me undress, grabbed and squeezed my breasts, then grabbed me by my vagina, opened my anus and stuck her hand so deep into it that I felt like she was tearing something. I bled for three days and had troubles walking for weeks. I couldn’t go to the bathroom, and I started having health problems, which I still suffer from today.”
ANAL TESTS
The torture intended for men suspected of homosexuality is anal testing. Alaa and one of his friends, who were arrested while standing in line at a bank, underwent it in 2018: “The medical examiner forcibly inserted first his fingers, then an object into my anus. I have no words to describe how humiliated I felt.” Alaa had already been arrested in 2007 and had been subjected to so many beatings and rapes while in detention that he now can move only with the help of a crutch. In 2018, he showed his disability card to the policemen who were beating him, but the highest-ranking officer replied that he could “shove it up his ass” and then ordered an officer to actually shove it up Alaa’s anus. The officer carried out the order without a word.
Hamed, 25, was also taken in front of a medical examiner to undergo an anal test: “They made me undress and the doctor stuck an object in my anus. It hurts so much that I couldn’t stop screaming.” To make the pain stop, Hamed said he had AIDS, at which point the doctor preferred to walk away from him. The boy had been arrested on the street by a policeman who, when he found out that he had been condemned of debauchery and prostitution in the past, seized his phone and downloaded men-only dating apps and gay pornographic photos on it. “I will throw you to soldiers, they will rape you one after the other,” promised the officer, who also outed Hamed on Internet.
THE AMBUSH
Hanan, a transgender girl, was arrested when she was just 17: on Grindr she had made an appointment at a restaurant with a man, but when she arrived there, police were waiting for her instead. The evidence of her guilt, in addition to the conversation on the dating app, were some pictures in which she was dressed in women’s clothes and a ticket to the Mashrou’ Leila concert. Hanan also suffered of beatings and an anal test. Officers made her too strip naked in front of everyone to examine her body and ask questions such as, “Do you shave?”, “Why do you have breast?”, “Why do you have long hair?”.
Her detention began in a court room where, in a space 2 by 3 meters wide, 35 other gay men and trans women were locked up. She was then transferred to a men-only prison. “I was sexually and verbally harassed, abused and teased. They touched me while I was sleeping so I stopped sleeping. The policemen beat me and meanwhile they told me, ‘We will teach you how to be a man.’ And if I resisted their abuse, they would torture me with a hose.” Hanan remained in prison for two and a half months before her trial began, where she was sentenced to a one-month detention for “inciting debauchery.”
ENDLESS NIGHTMARE
Adham was 22 years old when he was stopped by two policemen who, checking his phone, found a conversation with another man with some sexual references. After beating him up, they took him to the police station, where they ordered him to sign a confession in which he would admit to being guilty of “immorality and incitement to debauchery,” “sex trade,” and “attempting to fulfil forbidden sexual desires with men in exchange for money.” When Adham refused to sign, the policemen took him to a cell with other prisoners. “One policeman said, ‘Now I’m going to force them to fuck you, filthy faggot.’ The other inmates verbally assaulted and raped me.”
The next day, police brought him before the judge who ordered to release him, yet officers took him back to his cell, where he continued to be beaten and sexually assaulted by other inmates and police officers. A month later a different judge sentenced him to six months in prison for debauchery. Adham appealed and won the case, but the sentence in the first appeal, although overturned in the second, still appears on his criminal record and this prevents him from finding work. As with the other people who testified for Human Rights Watch, the end of detention does not mean the end of the nightmare at all.
Pier Cesare Notaro
translation by Luca Cremasco
©2020 Il Grande Colibrì
immagini: Il Grande Colibrì / elaborazione da Pikrepo (CC0)
