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We have been here before.
A female journalist sexually brutalized while simply trying to do her job.
A year and a half ago it was CBS correspondent Lara Logan, attacked by a mob in Egypt while reporting on the uprising there.
Last year journalist Mona Eltahawy described a 12 hour ordeal she says she endured while in the interior ministry in Cairo, in which her wrists were broken and she was groped repeatedly and violated.
Now, British student journalist Natasha Smith tells of being stripped naked by a crowd who turned on her in a matter of seconds. She was in Egypt working on a short documentary about women’s rights and abuses against women in Egypt. Dangerous and import work.
In her blog entry titled, “Please God, Make it Stop,” she writes:
Hundreds of men pulled my limbs apart and threw me around. They were scratching and clenching my breasts and forcing their fingers inside me in every possible way. So many men. All I could see was leering faces, more and more faces sneering and jeering as I was tossed around like fresh meat among starving lions.
Despite the hell on earth she survived, Smith goes on to say she is more focused than ever on why she is a journalist reporting on these exact issues of violence against women:
I have to find a silver lining to this experience. I have to spread awareness; it is my duty to do so. I have to do this; I will not be driven into submission. I will overcome this and come back stronger and wiser. My documentary will be fuelled by my passion to help make people aware of just how serious this issue is, and that it’s not just a passing news story that briefly gets people’s attention then is forgotten. This is a consistent trend and it has to stop. Arab women, western women – there are so many sufferers.
CNN’s Dan Rivers filed this report:
Sexualized violence against female journalists in not often documented, but is more common than most realize. Here is a special report from the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Back when Egypt was at war with the government, there were warnings about the Muslim Brotherhood and every US news organization seemed to cover the uprising as a good or even a great thing. These people in their Sharia Law belief will tell you that women have no rights. They want outsiders to fear them so they will stay out of their way of turning their people back into the Flintstones. Do female journalists really believe that the extremists people in power over there should care about them? Well they don’t. Your not going to make a difference to people who look at you as the problem. Feminism over there will get you beheaded. Stay out and let the savages eat each other.