Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 21:05:43 +0200
Sudanese woman charged with 'indecent dress' will keep on fighting for her
rights
Amira Osman Hamed was arrested in Khartoum last year for failing to wear a
headscarf
Haitham Nouri , Saturday 28 Jun 2014
Amira Osman Hamed was arrested and charged with "indecent dress" in August
last year after she was caught walking around Khartoum without wearing a
headscarf.
Hamed, 31, is still awaiting trial. If found guilty, she could be punished
with public flogging.
"In Sudan, violations of women rights take place every day, which is why we
launched the No to Oppressing Women Movement in 2009," Hamed stated.
"This regime is oppressing women.we will not stop protesting against their
sexist and oppressive laws," she told Ahram Online.
Back in 2013, a police officer stopped Hamed in the Sudanese capital and
asked her to cover her head. She replied by saying that she does not wear
the veil.
According to Hamed, the police officer called her an "indecent woman", while
another officer asked her not to look directly at a man while speaking to
him.
The woman was then taken to the police station; she says the first question
she was asked was which tribe she belonged to - a potentially controversial
question in Sudan where race and ethnicity can be political issues.
Sudanese human rights activist and lawyer Ali Mahgoub says that in Sudan
there are remnants of racism manifested in the question of tribal origin,
and therefore bringing up the topic to Hamed while being in the police
station was meant to disgrace her.
She was released on bail four hours later.
The law under which Hamed was charged is Article 152 of Sudan's 1991
Criminal Act. It is part of a wider set of "public order" laws and
practices, which stipulate flogging as punishment for any kind of public and
sometimes private behaviour deemed immoral.
Under the law, a woman charged with "indecent or immoral dress" may be
sentenced to up to 40 lashes.
A date was set for Hamed's trial in November last year, and dozens of
lawyers, activists and journalists gathered at the court for the session,
but the judge did not attend and the case was postponed until the next week,
and subsequently postponed again. No new date has been set.
The issue of public indecency arrests first came to global attention in 2009
through the case of journalist Lubna Hussein, who was arrested along with 12
other women, for wearing trousers. The court chose not to sentence Hussein
to flogging following the international attention her case attracted, but
she was jailed for a month for refusing to pay a fine and launching a public
campaign about the issue.
Many women charged with such offences choose to remain silent about their
experience, in part due to the trauma of their arrest and partly due to the
stigma of being charged immorality.
Hamed said that the authorities tried to blackmail her to prevent her
speaking to the media, but she refused to bargain.
Mahgoub argues that the Sudanese regime implements the laws in an attempt to
protect its extremist allies.
"But the system also wants to clean up its international image," he argues.
Sudan
Amira Osman Hamed Sudanese activist (Photo:Snapshot from You tube Al Youm
interview)
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)