Opening by the Preparatory Committee for “The Street is Ours” meeting

Press Syndicate – Cairo – 9th June 2005

Over the past few days the preparatory committee for this meeting has distributed thousands of invitations for this event. On more than one occasion, we faced the question: Who are they? The truth is that at the time of the distribution of those invitations and until this moment we are exactly how we are described in the invitation: a group of Egyptian women, no more or less. Women from different generations and from different aspects of life. What joined us is the black Wednesday, the 25th of May, the day of the ridiculous referendum, where the regime could not tolerate the voices of a few hundreds of protesters. So it decided to attack with all its political and police force, mobilized its police and security forces to brutally and violently try to silence those who are demanding real democracy. We were among those voices. We were met with the same police violence which meets all democracy fighters. But we are also subject to a violence that targeted us as women. The violence targeted our bodies and the hands of the thugs reached out in acts of sexual harassment and molestation which the Egyptian Ministry of Interior had practiced on hundreds of women in its police stations, state security intelligence officers, villages and remote cities. Yet, it had never done it before ion the center of the capital in front of everybody. The message of the ministry of interior to us, our families, friends and colleagues was clear: Women have to stay at home. They thought that sexual harassment is the tool that will terrorize women. They counted on the hegemony of tradition which associated women with the honor of the nation, then reduces that honor to their bodies and hence tries to isolate women from public life and within that public life in the name of the honor of the nation!

Wednesday was not the first time that sexual harassment was used to terrorize women and limit their participation in public life. They harass us in public busses and when we protest they tell us to stay at home. They harass us at the workplace and when we protest they tell us to stay at home. They harass us in demonstrations and when we protest they tell us to stay at home.

Wednesday the 1st June came as a strong answer to that message: we shall not stay at home. Our voices were not the only voices that were raised on that day. They were accompanied by hundreds of other voices, of women who were not subject to that harassment but who knew of it and their knowledge motivated them to the street to protest it. They were joined by the voices of men, young and older who expressed their solidarity with the right of Egyptian women to political struggle for democracy and against despotism.

Our gathering on that Wednesday was a declaration that we shall not remain at home, captive to our fears; a declaration that the Egyptian streets belong to us as much as they belong to all Egyptians. We have taken to the streets as pupils, as students, workers, peasants, housewives, professionals and faculty.. we have taken to the streets in solidarity with the heroic Palestinian Intifada and protesting the criminal war against Iraq. We have taken to the streets demanding the release of detainees and the lifting of the emergency state.. and we have taken to the street fighters for democracy and demanding democracy. And we shall not retreat!

Today our invitation is to build on that position we declared on the 1st of June; to discuss together the democracy that we are struggling for side by side with all democratic Egyptian groups and forces. On the black Wednesday they targeted us as women. Today we shall answer back as women. Our meeting can stop at the interventions and testimonies of participants, women and men, regarding the oppression that we face in all aspects of our lives. But it may also come out with a unified position and a unified strategy for the struggle for democracy in Egypt. It may even come out with a joint decision to start building a political movement, the core of which are women, inspired by the struggle of Egyptian women throughout history, and to constitute a strong contribution to the struggle for democracy and justice in Egypt. The matter is up to us in this meeting.

At the end we have to mention that this meeting has been prepared by the voluntary efforts of the preparatory group, which would never have been successful without your presence and without the efforts and participation of a large number of friends, foremost the young men and women of the youth movement for change.