Women's new weapon against sexual harassment in Iraq: cameras, video and social media
'Get out of the car.'
A woman shouted angrily. Her allegation was that while she was passing through the road, the driver of the car showed her his private parts and said obscene things.
This incident happened on a busy street of Baghdad. The woman was making a video of this with her phone. The video showed that the woman was trying to open the car door, but the driver was refusing to get out. The woman was standing there facing him.
This video and many other such videos can be seen on the Instagram page of Sara Jassim, who works for women's rights in Iraq. Sara posts this video on behalf of women who accuse Iraqi men and boys of sexual exploitation and harassment.
Sarah told the BBC, "Your camera is your weapon. If a woman decides to file a lawsuit against the person harassing her, the video can serve as evidence. At the very least, it can serve as a means of embarrassing that person."
According to Sara, the alleged accused was arrested after a video she posted. He was a policeman who was accused of harassing school girls.
Sara said that posting these videos is dangerous for her and the women concerned. We spoke to many women who faced sexual exploitation in Iraq. He said that society often blames the victim woman.
Sara said, "I have received death threats. I have also been threatened with acid attack. I have been accused of spreading obscenity in public because I ask women to speak out in a society that expects us to remain silent."
Due to her safety, Sara hardly comes out of the house now. Instead she spends many hours with her dog. He says that there is a need for more strict laws in the country. There should also be such laws in which 'harassment' and 'sexual violence' are clearly considered crimes. At present these words are not mentioned in Iraq's penal code.
She says, "Accepting the problem is the best way to deal with it. We need security and the exploiters have to be stopped."
Many Iraqi women told the BBC that the justice system and police did not support them. According to activists and lawyers we spoke to, bringing legal action against someone accused of torture or rape in Iraq is a lengthy process. Its processes are difficult and there is no confidence in the results.
A UN committee that looks into cases of discrimination against women said in its report released in May that violence against women and girls in Iraq "remains widespread and most of it goes unreported." The committee had demanded further strengthening of the laws.
Among its dozens of recommendations, the committee asked officials to end "discriminatory" laws that allow a rapist to escape punishment by marrying his victim. The committee also called for the abolition of laws that allow commutation of murder sentences in cases where the convicted person commits murder in the name of so-called "honour killing".
Amal's story has been going on in the court for five years. She alleges that her ex-husband repeatedly raped her daughter at gunpoint. At that time his daughter was less than 18 years old. Amal recalled the scary incident narrated by her daughter. According to him, the father went to the girl's room and placed his weapon on her bed. He told the girl, 'If I kill you, no one will hear.'
In Iraq, sexual abuse has long been considered a topic that should not be discussed. Some women told us that they did not want to go to the police due to fear of social stigma and possible harassment. But Amal decided to get justice and immediately went to the police to report the incident.
Amal said, 'There were many injury marks around her wrists because he had held her hands very tightly. Whenever she tried to scream, he would cover her mouth with his hand. Amal showed me the medical documents. These also included DNA related evidence, which supports his point. According to Amal, another example of her ex-husband's cruelty came to light when she overheard him telling a family member to 'cleanse our face' if he got arrested.
Amal believes that the father had threatened to kill his daughter, 'so that the medical report would not come out and the attack could not be proved.' She says that her ex-husband is absconding and the case is still going on in the court.
Amal cried while telling that her ex-husband hired many lawyers, but she did not have money to hire her own lawyer. He said, 'I fought this entire battle alone.' Amal is no longer confident that the court's decision will be in his favor.
Many women who face sexual exploitation have no income of their own and no place to go. There are very few shelters for women facing violence in Iraq. The shelters that we know about were created by an organization co-founded by Yanar Mohammed. She was an internationally known activist working for women's rights. Last March, armed men killed him outside his home in Baghdad. The perpetrators of the murder have not been known yet.
Experts working for the United Nations Human Rights Council wrote in April that Mohammed had been receiving death threats and online abuse for several years. It was believed that these threats were coming from 'extremist religious militias'.
Hana Adwar, another prominent activist working for women's rights, said that she had met Mohammed just two days before his murder. Hana said that she too has received threats. She told me, 'There is no law, no security and no justice for women in Iraq.'
Mustafa Saadoun, head of the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights, told the BBC: 'The problem in Iraq is not that women remain silent. The problem is that when they speak, there are very few avenues in the system for their voices to be heard.
Samira is also among those Iraqi women who feel that the system has not supported them. She told the BBC that due to the repeated harassment she has faced, she is always scared and alert even when walking on the street. He told that once in public transport a man was watching a pornographic film on his phone and he placed the phone in front of his face. Regarding another incident that took place in Baghdad, Sameera told that a man followed her in a car for more than 10 minutes. He said, 'It was very disturbing. I saw a police car. I went to him and told the policemen what had happened. He said he had no authority to do anything.
Sameera has lost trust in government institutions. She says, 'Many men, including police officers, do not see anything wrong in sexual harassment. According to them, if you don't harass, you are not a man.
Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Muqdad Miri said, "There are cases of policemen being involved in harassment, but such cases are very rare. They are given very harsh punishments. This can include up to 10 years in prison and they are also fired from the job."
I told them that some women are now recording evidence of harassment on social media because they are afraid to complain to the police. He said that women post on social media because it is easier than filing a formal complaint. Posting on social media has now become a common way to draw attention to an issue.
Hannah Edwards has been working for women's issues for more than 50 years. She said, '23 years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government, it seems that we are going backward in terms of women's rights.' But both Hanna and Sara said that they would not give up. Sara said, 'If we all get scared then no one will be able to change anything.'
