The phone camera is your weapon: how Iraqi women defy death threats to fight against sexual violence

The phone camera is your weapon": how Iraqi women defy death threats to fight against sexual violence - Author, Sally Nabil - Author's Title, BBC Arabic News - Reported from, Baghdad - Publication Date - Reading Time: 8 min Warning: This story contains details about sexual violence. "Get out of the car!", shouts a woman, accusing the driver of exhibitionism and of making obscene comments while she was passing. The woman records the scene with her phone on a crowded street in Baghdad, and the camera captures how he resists opening the door while she confronts him. The video, along with others similar, can be seen on Sarah Jassim's Instagram page, an Iraqi activist for women's rights. She posts them on behalf of women who report abuse and sexual harassment by men and young men. "Your camera is your weapon," she tells the BBC. "It is a way to document evidence in case a woman decides to sue her abuser, or at least it is a means to shame him." According to her, one of the videos she posted led to the arrest of the alleged perpetrator, a police officer accused of harassing students. Jassim claims that posting the videos is risky for her as well as for the women involved. We have spoken to numerous victims of sexual abuse in Iraq, who assure us that society usually blames them. "I have received death threats and they have also threatened me with acid attacks," says Jassim. "They have accused me of incitement to public indecency because I encourage women to speak in a society that expects us to keep silent." She now barely leaves the house, for her own safety, and instead spends hours playing with her dog. She believes that there is a need for stricter laws, including measures that explicitly criminalize harassment and gender-based violence, terms that are currently not in the country's penal code. "Recognizing the problem is the best way to address it," she states. "We need protection; we must deter the aggressors." "No one will know if I kill you." Many Iraqi women have told the BBC they feel let down by the judicial and police systems. Taking legal action against a harasser or a violator is a long process in Iraq, with complicated procedures and uncertain results, according to several activists and lawyers we have spoken to. According to a report published in May by a UN committee, violence against women and girls in Iraq is "widespread and not reported enough." The document called for stricter legislation. Among dozens of recommendations, it urged authorities to repeal the "discriminatory" laws that exonerate violators if they marry their victims and allow reduced sentences for murder in cases where the perpetrator committed a so-called "honor crime." Amal (a pseudonym) has been fighting in court for about five years. She accuses her ex-husband of repeatedly raping her daughter, who was under 18 at the time, with a gun. She recalls her daughter's heartbreaking account of the incident, when she says the father entered the girl's room and left his weapon on the bed. She claims he warned her: "No one will know if I kill you." Sexual abuse has long been a taboo subject in Iraq. I have been in contact with many survivors who say they prefer to keep silent for fear of family reprisals. Others told us they were afraid to go to the police, fearing social stigma and possible harassment. But Amal was determined to seek justice and quickly went to the authorities to report the incident. "She had many bruises around her wrists because he held her hands tightly. Every time she tried to scream, he covered her mouth with his hands," recounts Amal. Amal showed me medical documents, including DNA evidence, that support her version of events. She also recounts that another example of her ex-husband's cruelty occurred when she heard him tell a relative to "wash our dishonor" if they arrested him. This expression is used in Iraq to refer to so-called honor crimes, committed under the belief that a woman has sullied the family's reputation. Amal claims that she believes the father threatened to end her daughter's life "so that the medical report would not be published and the assault would not be proven." She points out that her ex-husband is on the run and the legal case is still open. "I fought completely alone," says Amal, breaking down in tears while recounting that her ex-husband hired several lawyers, but she could not afford legal representation, and her family turned a blind eye to the situation. She no longer has any hope that a court ruling will be favorable to her. "I just want him to stay out of my life forever," she says with a sigh of despair. Murdered Activist Many survivors have no income or a place to go. Iraq has very few shelters for abused women. The organizations we have information about were founded by Yanar Mohammed, an internationally recognized women's rights defender. Last March, she was murdered in front of her house in Baghdad by armed men. The perpetrators of the crime are still unknown. In April, experts working for the UN Human Rights Council wrote that Mohammed had been receiving death threats and online abuse for years, which "is believed to have come from extremist religious militias." The activists have repeatedly told us that selective attacks against their colleagues have increased in recent years. Hanaa Edwar, another prominent women's rights activist, stated that she had seen Mohammed just two days before her murder. She adds that she also received threats. "In Iraq there are no laws, no protection, no justice for women," she tells me. "The problem in Iraq is not that women keep silent. It is that when they speak, the system is very unprepared to listen to them," declared Mustafa Saadoon, director of the Iraqi Human Rights Observatory to the BBC. "A woman who reports sexual violence first has to go through her family, then the police station, then the court, and in each of those instances, it is likely that someone will tell her to resolve it privately." "They followed me in a vehicle." Among the Iraqi women who claim to feel let down by the system is Samira, a fictional name. According to her statement to the BBC, walking down the street makes her very nervous after repeatedly suffering harassment. On one occasion, she recounts that a man "was watching a porn movie on his phone and put it on my face" on public transport. In another incident that occurred in Baghdad, she recounts that a man followed her in her car for more than 10 minutes. "It was very distressing... I saw a police patrol. I approached them and told them what happened. They told me they had no authority to do anything." Although her mother is affectionate and supports her, Samira does not share with her any stories of sexual harassment. "If I tell my family, they will immediately ask me not to leave the house to be safe," she says. She has lost faith in state institutions: "Many men, including the police, see nothing wrong with sexual harassment. If you are not a harasser, you are not a man; that's how they see it," she adds. Many women I spoke to in Iraq even accused the police of sexual harassment. I presented the accusation to Muqdad Miri, spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. "Cases of harassment by police officers do occur, but there are very few. They receive a very severe punishment, up to 10 years in prison, and are dismissed," Miri states. I mentioned to him that some women were documenting the harassment on social media because they were afraid to report it to the police. He responded that they were doing it because it was easier than filing an official complaint and because it had become a way to make a cause visible. I also mentioned Samira's experience, who claims that an officer told her she had no authority to stop the harassment. Miri commented that Samira could have filed a complaint against that officer. There are no reliable statistics on violence or sexual harassment in Iraq. Miri told me that the police have received around 300 reports of sexual violence since the beginning of the year. However, he acknowledges that the real figure is higher: "Many cases never reach the police due to society, customs, and traditions." The stories of the women I spoke to the BBC paint a picture of their fight not only against sexual violence itself but also against deeply rooted social mentalities and beliefs that allow it to persist. Edwar has been defending women's rights for more than 50 years and her assessment is disheartening: "Twenty-three years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime, it seems we are going backward in terms of women's rights." But both she and Jassim claim that they refuse to give up: "If we all are afraid, no one will change anything," says Sarah. Additional information from Salma Khattab. This article was originally written in English and we used an artificial intelligence tool to translate it. A BBC journalist reviewed the text before its publication. More information on how we use AI. - Download the new BBC World Service app. Choose BBC News Mundo and receive news alerts, documentaries, and analysis, all in one place. 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