Cairo, June 02: Egyptian activists are demanding an investigation into ‘virginity tests’ conducted on women protesters arrested by the country’s military rulers.
A senior military official has admitted that women arrested at a peaceful protest were strip searched on camera and subjected to a degrading examination by soldiers. But he tried to defend the process, to condemnation from the youth protest movement, which has heavily criticised military control of the country since president Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down in February.
The unnamed general told CNN: “ 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).” “ The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine. These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and ( drugs),” the general said.
Activists say they will hold a day of online protest over the tests, accusations of which first surfaced after a March 9 rally in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that turned violent when men in plain clothes attacked protesters and the army intervened forcefully to clear the square.
One woman who was arrested spoke out about her treatment, and Amnesty International further documented the abuse allegations in a report that found 18 female detainees were threatened with prostitution charges and forced to undergo virginity tests. They were also beaten up and given electric shocks, the report said.
Since Mubarak’s fall on February 11, the military has led crackdowns on peaceful protests, and critics accuse it of failing to restore security in the streets or launch serious national dialogue.
–Agencies