Why are Femicides Increasing in Egypt?

Social media in Egypt has been abuzz with the news of the murder of a Menoufia girl, Amani al-Gazzar, after a young man, Ahmed Fathy, shot her with a firearm in the back because of allegations that she refused to marry him, repeating the scenario of the crime of Naira Ashraf, who was killed by her university classmate a month ago.

For their part, the Egyptian security services confirmed the suicide of the killer of the student Amani, 20 years old, after his body was found committing suicide with the same weapon he used in the commission of the crime. Legal action has been taken, and the Public Prosecution has taken over the investigation, local media reported.

The student at the Faculty of Physical Education was killed in front of her family home. Her family stated that the defendant lived on the same street and used to intercept and harass her.

After Amani al-Jazzar was taken to the hospital to be placed on a ventilator, she died of her last breath from her serious injury.

 

Salma's Incident

Egypt has recently witnessed a phenomenon of young men killing women for rejecting their advances.

Salma Bahgat, a 20-year-old Al-Shorouk Academy student studying media, was assassinated by a fellow student in the city of Zagazig, northeast of Cairo, last month.

Eslam Mohammed allegedly stabbed Bahgat 17 times while he was leaving a building in Zagazig.

According to local media, Mohammed eventually admitted to killing Bahgat "out of retaliation" after it was said that Bahgat had turned down his approaches, as per AFP.

A 2015 UN poll found that approximately 8 million Egyptian women have experienced violence from spouses, relatives, or complete strangers in public settings.

According to a report released in February by the Edraak Foundation for Development and Equality, there were 813 reported incidents of violence against women and girls in 2021, up from 415 in 2020.

Recent high-profile femicides, such as the killing of television host Shaimaa Gamal in June, have sparked intense resentment in Egypt. According to the prosecution, a tip from an accomplice who admitted to participating in the crime led to the arrest of her husband, a high judicial officer.

In March, a teenager was sentenced to five years in prison over the suicide of a schoolgirl after images of her were shared online.

 

Social Motives

In this regard, Dr. Walid Hindi, a mental health consultant, said that there are many crimes that shook the conscience of the whole humanity where love was the motivation. Statistics say that 40% of the victims of homicide are females compared to only 6% of males and most of the murders are from the lover, whether an ex-, current lover, or through the husband.

Hindi explained in press statements that many psychological reasons make the lover kill the one he loves, the most important of which is the infection of Othello's disease, which is the pathological jealousy that leads to the killing of the beloved.

For his part, Egyptian researcher Mustafa Khodari revealed that "Egyptian society is currently going through a stage of decline and decline as a result of several factors, the most important of which is that the Sisi's regime lacks the lowest moral standards in its behavior, steps, and goals."

Activists attributed the reason for the escalation of murders to the coup d'état done by Sisi's regime.

Others spoke of a negative wave of society toward such crimes, as well as the state's failure to carry out its security, community, and health duties, as well as the instigation of a coup d'état against the blood chain to move it from a novel and a series to a lived reality.

Mustafa Abo Mazen wrote on Twitter: "I wish we could go down and regain our rights, our first and our legitimacy, which Sisi turned against and made us watch the killing and blood on television screens. We should recover our country and the rights of Nira Ashraf."

Journalist Osama Gawish wrote: "Egypt is reaping the fruits of the Mohamed Ramadan series and spreading the culture of bullying, swords, and weapons. Egypt reaps the regime's preoccupation with hunting down opponents and elites and letting the real criminals corrupt the land, may God have mercy on this girl and grant her family patience.

"He became the official sponsor of systematic violence, starting with the massacres of Rabaa, Ennahda, and their likes, and passing through the physical liquidation of his opponents outside the law, and ending with the adoption of this approach in his artworks, actors, media and others who have reacted to hypocrisy, bullying, and moral inferiority," he said.

 

Worrying Femicides

According to the classification of the encyclopedia of the world database Numbeo, which is concerned with assessing the level of crime and the degree of safety in the countries of the world, Egypt comes in 65th place globally, 19th place in Africa and third in the Arab world after Libya and Algeria in terms of crime rates between countries, according to the mid-2022 statistics.

In its monitoring of violence against women and children in 2020, the Egyptian Center for Thought and Strategic Studies confirmed that murder and attempted murder come at the forefront of violent crimes with 173 cases, followed by sexual crimes with 38 cases.

While Egypt's homicide rates have increased by 130%, according to a 2018 Public Security Agency report on crime rates in Egypt, a 2016 study by the National Center for Criminal and Social Research (governmental) pointed to the motives for the increase.

The study confirmed that family killings constitute a quarter to a third of all homicides, pointing to the role of economic factors, explaining that husbands committed 70% of crimes against their wives, 20% by brothers against their sisters, 7% by fathers against their daughters, and 3% of sons against their mothers.