Testimonies: Female Protesters Sexually Harassed at Beirut Protests

Over the past couple of weeks, Lebanon‘s popular protests had been daubed with the same transgressions that faced the Arab Spring in Egypt. Aside from the banners raised in demand of justice, freedom, and accountability for the corrupt, the protests were brimmed with sufficient claims of sexual harassment.

A number of participants revealed that a good deal of young men were heading to Downtown Beirut during protests to hit on girls and molest them.

‘Sawt al-Niswa’ page had been documenting female participation in the civic movement, as well as all transgressions committed against them since the beginning of the anti-government protests.

The page amassed a list of testimonies by girls who took to the streets, they are as follows:

First testimony: I was standing in the fifth row near Annahar building, facing the anti-riot forces. We had converged in the street that leads to the Nejmeh square but we could hardly move, the place was small and overcrowded.

Amid what seemed like a scuffle between protesters and the anti-riot police, a guy suddenly screamed, took my hand and pulled me out of the center; I think he only wanted to protect me.

I stood my ground in the dim light, watching everyone get frenzied by the cheers.

There, I noticed two men beside me, they looked suspicious and out of place. One had a phosphorescent shirt on, the other a white one. At one point, I felt someone grabbing my behind. I turned and the guy wearing the phosphorescent shirt was standing behind me. I started shouting and pushing him but he didn't apologize or justify his action. He told me it was my friend who did it and with great ease and calm, he simply walked to the back rows.

I noticed that the other guy in the white shirt had positioned himself right behind my friend so I kept eyeing him. Later on, my friend told me that he was harassing her; she said he would rub his body against hers and touch her.

Second testimony: I felt an erect penis prodding me from behind, I looked around and found a 50-year-old man just standing still, not even cheering with the rest. I humiliated him; I started yelling at him until he quickly vanished in the back.

After a while, someone was trying to insert their hand under my clothes to get to my private parts, he was a young man in his twenties.

After the incident, I felt an urgent need to leave the protest. As I reached the sidewalk, a 17-year-old boy tried to grab my breasts. He also tried to pull my shirt but I pushed him and ran out fast.

Third Testimony: We were standing near Annahar building at around 6:30pm when a group of young men approached and started shouting “Allah, Berri, the revolution…” When the forty-year-old lady with us started to scold them, one guy pulled out his junk and started wagging it. We spat at him as he kept taunting us with his gross sexual acts.