{"id":4409,"date":"2020-08-26T13:57:08","date_gmt":"2020-08-26T13:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/media.sfjn.org\/?page_id=4409"},"modified":"2020-10-20T09:25:16","modified_gmt":"2020-10-20T09:25:16","slug":"we-believe-the-survivors-against-harassment-and-discrimination-in-media","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/media.sfjn.org\/en\/we-believe-the-survivors-against-harassment-and-discrimination-in-media\/","title":{"rendered":"We Believe The Survivors…Against Harassment And Discrimination In Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

25 August 2020 –<\/strong> Several media outlets and social media accounts have been recently talking about testimonies accusing the Egyptian investigative journalist Hisham Allam of sexual harassment and rape, especially the testimonies published by the blog <\/span>Daftar Hekayat<\/span><\/a> which has documented 6 cases of harassment and rape of journalists in the region during the past few years. Therefore; SFJN condemns the massive amount of violence that women journalists are subjected to, about which they often remain silent due to fear and the threat of exposure.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is new about this case is two things, first the questioning of the survivors\u2019 testimonies as documented by Daftar Hekayat which we find a very important platform for believing the survivors and victims and open an alternative space for them to share and document their experiences without judgments or restrictions as a public case that\u2019s not only specific to the survivors. Second, the fact that the aforementioned journalist is denying the accusations and decided to resort to the Egyptian judiciary, which gives the judiciary the opportunity to rule on this case. The judiciary system in most of the region\u2019s countries was never just to victims of sexual harassment and assault neither was state institutions. However, we hope that the judiciary ruling in this case will be just and take into account the the announced and unannounced privileges for all the parties involved and that it will be on the side of the victims.<\/span><\/p>\n

We would like to emphasize that repressive patriarchal practices can come from women as well, and in this case we find that the attempt to descredit testimonies published on the blog by a woman is just one of those repressive and violent practices that reinforce a culture of oppression and lead to silencing women who try to speak up about the violence they experience and expose the harassers. We do not consider that a woman\u2019s contesting the survivors \u2019testimonies gives legitimacy to questioning these testimonies, just because she is a woman, hence; we are suspending any cooperation with the journalist Rama Deep, who fabricated one of the testimonies in the <\/span>video<\/span><\/a> that was published on August 21, until we investigate all aspects of the case.<\/span><\/p>\n

These practices are historical and contribute to shrinking the safety space in the media sector and create an unsafe work environment for female journalists. Moreover, these violent practices impede our pursuit of social justice for all women and men of different ages and diverse\u00a0 cultural backgrounds and physical abilities. It is crucial in this statement that we draw the attention of media organizations to the importance of fighting these practices and working towards preventing and punishing these practices in a way that limits and ends them and encourages female journalists to report them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Accordingly, we wish to alert media organizations to some of the reasons that lead to an increase in harassment against women journalists and that undermine our efforts to confront them, including:<\/span><\/p>\n