Egypt: MEN DRAGGED AWAY WEARING ONLY THEIR UNDERWEAR

December 10, 2014

Egypt: MEN DRAGGED AWAY WEARING ONLY THEIR UNDERWEAR

The raid took place at 10pm on Sunday in the Ramses District of Downtown Cairo. Iraqi was present alongside police and leather jacketed State Security officials as around twenty six or more gay men were rounded up and led to police trucks.

The photos appear to show that the arrests took place at hammam bab el bahr which is just a short walk from Ramses Square and dates back to the Ottoman period. Quite how the police were able to see what was happening through all the vapor and steam is an interesting question, but one that state appointed lawyers are unlikely to ask.

Neither are they likely to point out that in a recent academic article the authors were seemingly surprised to discover that at bab el bahr the management encouraged modesty by handing out pairs of shorts along with the towels (HBRC jounral “Survival of the Mediterranean Hammam in Contemporary Societies”).

Nevertheless TV presenter Monica Iraqi published photos on her Facebook page of the hammam’s customers claiming she was filming a program to highlight the dangers of HIV and called the bathhouse “a den for spreading AIDS in Egypt” saying that those detained had been taken to the prosecution without any clothes “since these were needed as evidence.”

Some photos however indicated that the men might have been allowed to wear their underwear as they were herded into police vans. However even this would have been a shameful humiliation on a bitterly cold winter’s night in Cairo. And if they were taken semi naked to police cells directly, as is likely, they would have met a very hostile reception from other inmates.

ORDERS FOR RAID CAME FROM HIGH UP

It’s unlikely that Iraqi was the author of this witch hunt. A decision for such a highly publicized event would have had to have obtained very high clearance from the Ministry of Interior and possibly even from the office of the president.

The government has to meet head on any criticism that they are less conservative on social issues than the Muslim Brotherhood and at the same time the publicity afforded to any trial will help to focus media attention away from the government’s failure to tackle poverty, inequality and corruption.

The police have been aware for years of what was going on in Cairo’s few remaining bathhouses but until October 2013 they choose to look away. That month there was a police raid on a bathhouse in Marg, a poor neighbourhood in north east Cairo, during which 14 men were arrested. However this latest round up is considerably larger and the first ever to be accompanied by a television journalist.

It is ironic that Iraqi claimed she had instigated the raid in order to bring about greater awareness of HIV and AIDS. What is now certain is that the gay community will be driven underground.