DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Abrar Zenkawi was on his way to the beach in Kuwait when he saw a man waving and smiling in the rearview mirror.
Elsewhere, there may have been a benign flirtation on the highway. But in Kuwait, it is an obsessive routine that often becomes dangerous. The man stopped beside her, approached, and finally entered her. Zenkawi’s car, carrying her little nieces, sister and girlfriend, overturned six times.
“It simply came to our notice then. Men always go too close to scare girls, drive them home, watch them at work, just for fun, ”said Zenkawi, 34, who spent months in hospital with broken spine. “They don’t think about the consequences.”
But this may change as women increasingly challenge Kuwaiti’s deeply patriarchal society. In recent weeks, a growing number of women have broken taboos to talk about the scourge of harassment and violence affecting the streets, highways and malls of the Gulf nation, in an echo of the global #MeToo movement.
An Instagram page has led to testimonies from women fed up with being bullied or attacked in a country where the penal code does not define sexual harassment and sets few repercussions for men who kill female relatives for actions they consider immoral. A wide variety of news and talk shows addressed the subject of harassment for the first time. And a journalist used a hidden camera to document how women are treated on the streets.
The spark could have come from fashion blogger Ascia al-Faraj, who threw herself on Snapchat in January to her millions of followers after being followed by a man in a high-speed car. In such episodes, men often try to “hit” a woman’s car, but many serious accidents result, as in the case of Zenkawi.
“It’s terrifying, you always feel so insecure in your skin,” al-Faraj told the Associated Press. “It simply came to our notice then. “We probably had too much music or windows down.”
Shayma Shamo, a 27-year-old doctor, sought to take advantage of the impulse of the viral video al-Faraj, creating an Instagram page called “Lan Asket”, in Arabic “I will not be silent”.
Shamo’s rage had been building for weeks. In December, a Kuwaiti parliamentarian was stabbed to death by her 17-year-old brother because he did not want her to work as a security guard. It was the third such case – described as “honor killings” – to make headlines in as many months. The all-male National Assembly, despite a record number of candidates in the recent elections, did not offer any of the usual condolences.
“The silence was deafening,” Shamo said. “I thought, OK, this can happen to me and anyone could get rid of it.”
Kuwait, unlike other oil-rich sheikhs in the Persian Gulf, has a legislature with genuine power and some tolerance for political dissent. But restrictions on slowing the spread of the coronavirus prevented Shamo from staging a protest and forced her to mourn her grievances online, as did women in more repressive countries in the region. recently.
Lan Asket’s account focused on sexual harassment, long shrouded in shame.
From there, the conversation moved to traditional media. A well-known journalist with the state-run al-Qabas newspaper came out at night with a hidden camera and captured motorcyclists trying to get her attention, men shouting sexual curses in the street and strangers pulling the hair of passing women – offering evidence for millions of people in Kuwait about the harassment women described.
“It seems rudimentary, but I’ve never had these discussions before,” said Najeeba Hayat, who helped organize the Lan Asket campaign, which also instructs bus drivers to report harassment, running an advertising campaign to raise awareness and create a application that allows women to anonymously report abuse to the police. “Every single girl has held this in her chest for so long.”
As the movement gained steam, lawmakers rushed to respond. Seven politicians, from conservative Islamists to powerful liberals, last month tabled amendments to the penal code that would define and punish sexual harassment, including one calling for a $ 10,000 fine and a one-year sentence.
“Kuwait’s penal code does not cover harassment, there are only a few laws covering immorality, which are so vague that women cannot go and report to the local police,” said Abdulaziz al-Saqabi, a conservative who was among those which amendments drafted.
But women’s rights activists, whose input has not been sought by lawmakers, are skeptical that the proposals will result in significant change, especially with the nation in the midst of a financial crisis. and with Parliament now suspended due to a political confrontation.
The frustration is familiar to activist Nour al-Mukhled. For years, she and other women have struggled to abolish a law that classifies the killing of adulterous women by fathers, brothers or wives as a crime and sets a maximum sentence of three years in prison. Such leniency remains common in the Gulf, although the United Arab Emirates has charged “honor killings.” last autumn.
Kuwait also has statues that allow kidnappers to evade punishment by marrying their victims and empowering men to “discipline” their female relatives with attack.
“In Kuwait, there can be no legal change without cultural change, and this is still culturally acceptable,” al-Mukhled said. It was not until August that parliament passed a law opening shelters for victims of domestic abuse.
But progress is happening outside official circles, activists say. In recent weeks, an increasing number of women’s groups have appeared in homes and on Zoom – a mirror of the “diwanyia” custom, gentlemen’s clubs, which often throw men into top jobs. The women also turned to Clubhouse, the buzzy app that allows people to gather in audio chat rooms to discuss sexual assault and harassment.
The horizon for equality may be far away, but activists say their ambitions are modest in the short term.
At the moment, the attempted murder is considered a “flirtation,” said Hayat, one of the organizers of the Lan Asket campaign. “We just want to be treated like human beings, not aliens and not prey.”