Egypt General: Confirms Virginity Checks Forced on Female Protesters

source

Via CNN and other sources today, the revolting news that a senior Egyptian general admits so-called "virginity checks" (presumably, forcible examination of the hymen) were performed on women arrested in at least one demonstration this spring. Previously, military authorities denied it. Now, an Egyptian general who asked not to be identified defends the practice—wait for it—as a protective measure for the women's own good.

As noted previously on Boing Boing, Amnesty International reported and condemned news of this systematic sexual abuse by military agents back in March. At the time, women were at the forefront of the historic Tahrir Square protests that overthrew the regime of President Hosni Mubarak. And Amnesty International was told then by a group of women protesters "that they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then forced to submit to 'virginity checks' and threatened with prostitution charges."

With that in mind, here's a snip from Shahira Amin's report today for CNN:


"The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general said. "These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs)."

The general said the virginity checks were done so that the women wouldn't later claim they had been raped by Egyptian authorities.

"We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place," the general said. "None of them were (virgins)."

Tea Party Jesus on Bryan Fischer's Reading of Crucifixion as Justification for Aggressive War

Here's what the Tea Party Jesus site makes of the recent remarks of Bryan Fischer of American Family Association depicting Jesus's crucifixion as a religious justification for aggressive war with massive conflicts.

Bryan Fischer on God's Approval of Aggressive Wars: The Price of U.S. Catholic Bishops' Alliance with Religious Right

Dear God: it wasn't enough for Bryan Fischer to write recently that Jesus's death on the cross is an icon indicating God's approval of militaristic aggression, and as Andrew Sullivan aptly puts it, kicking ass on the cross.

But now this:

The bottom line here is that the God of the Bible clearly honors those who show valor and gallantry in waging aggressive war in a just cause against the enemies of freedom, even while inflicting massive casualties in the process.

What I'm saying is that it's time we started imitating God's example again.

Fischer has also, of course, crusaded for the "death penalty" for animals that kill humans, and for those who are gay and lesbian, citing the bible as well for those positions.

And these are the kind of people that our Republican-glorifying, right-tilting U.S. Catholic bishops want, increasingly, to get into bed with.  Better start stripping our churches of all the statues of St. Francis, with his prayer encouraging us to make peace and forgive our enemies, and his journey by foot to embrace the Sultan.  And while we're at it, we might expunge those lines from the gospels in which Jesus tells us that peacemakers are blessed, those who take the sword will die by it, we'll be forgiven in the measure by which we forgive our own enemies, and in which he asks his father to forgive those who crucify him.