We all know about the sexual assault on Lara Logan during celebrations over Mubarak’s resignation, see my post It Could Happen Anywhere, But It Happened There. There also were the cases of the French journalist Caroline Sinz and US-Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy assaulted in Tahrir Square, see my post, It could happen anywhere, but it keeps happening there.
Now there is yet another case, British student journalist Natasha Smith. Her horrifying ordeal during celebrations over the election of Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi is set forth on her blog.
There has been relatively little U.S. mainstream media coverage of the assault on Smith, although to its credit CNN has covered it (via Mediaite):
I’ll repeat what I said with regard to Logan:
Yes, it’s absolutely true that rape and gang rape could happen anywhere, and have happened with shocking frequency particularly in war zones. Whether it was Soviet troops in the aftermath of the conquest of Germany, or various African troops in the conquest of tribal villages, the use of rape as a means of exerting political power has been all too common and worthy of condemnation and action. Ms. Logan’s native South Africa has a particularly notorious problem of rape being used as a means of societal revenge.There is no single racial, ethnic, religious or political group which uniquely owns such infamy.But we also cannot ignore that while it could happen anywhere, it did happen in Tahrir Square at a moment of national celebration in the open and in a public place, directed at someone who must have been viewed as a symbol of the West.
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