Rape and Sexual Harassment in these countries

The recent stories of foreigners getting raped in India just brought these issues to the global spotlight. BUT, obviously, these things have been going on for years and years. The rape statistics in India, how the authorities treat women who report cases (allegedly they don’t react much), and how, in general, women are treated in these country, as evidenced by a long list of warnings in the country’s official website on how women who visit the country should behave and dress should attest, are all evidence of how blatantly rampant sexual harassment and rape happens in India.

Even the public outcry for that young local medical student who was gang raped in a bus, didn’t seem to do much difference. It is sad. That girl was a university student and she was with her boyfriend. It’s not like she was stupidly walking alone in the slums.

Now there is this new report, of this Norwegian woman who was raped by a guy at a hotel in Dubai and was arrested when she reported it to the police. She was charged with having sex outside of marriage. 

What?! You say. 

BUT this one isn’t particularly new either. A lot of our “sex for flight” OFW victims are also the products of such situations in the Middle East. According to a friend of mine who once worked in Saudi Arabia, that often these girls who end up taking the “sex for flight” deals are just desperate because they usually are either illegal contract workers who ran away (for whatever reason, including sexual harassment or rape) or even legal workers who also ran away (for reasons that include sexual harassment or rape as well) or OFWs who get into relationships with locals, who also end up in a similar situation (sexually harassed, raped or caught having consensual sex). Unmarried men and women are not allowed to meet up in the country, it is illegal.

My friend told me of an acquaintance of hers who accompanied a friend to go to her Arab boyfriend’s house, which was as mentioned illegal. Her friend and her boyfriend had consensual sex while she waited in the living room. Unfortunately, the guy's brother was also there. This brother saw the opportunity to brutally raped her. But though she was truly raped, she couldn’t go to the police because she knew that she would be arrested so she had no choice but to let the assault go. She had a legitimate contract job there and she had the means to go home, hence she didn’t have to go through the system or be lured into a “sex for flight” arrangement. Still, an injustice was done to her, and she still had live with it, and she had to let it go because of these barbaric, irrational and misogynistic laws in the country.  

Other OFWs aren’t so fortunate however. After suffering rape/harassment in these countries, they run to our embassy and will be further harassed by our officials and be sold, if they are desperate enough.

I don’t know why the western world is just crying out about this now? It’s long overdue and it’s not even enough. I suppose, it’s better late than never.  


Good for this Norwegian woman, she’s white and a European so she is able to get this magical pardon. For that matter, I don’t know why she’s idiotically so smiley in her news video feeds. I get it, she’s happy to be able to go home instead of being locked up in prison but CNN’s Hola Gorani verbalized what I was thinking as I watched her on TV. She was given a pardon, which means the Dubai government still deemed her guilty of a crime. She was raped yet her assailant is just as free as she is. He was, apparently, also pardoned. There was no justice done here. She was the victim yet it seems she has forgotten that. So, she’s just so smiley and full of glee on TV. Her rapist remains free as a bird, like nothing happened, except he was not convicted of rape. Hmm? 

Norwegian Victim: SMILEY

I mean, she’s got the international media attention now, perhaps the least she could do is speak out against these unjust laws. If she can’t put her rapist behind bars, she should use her bad experience to bring about international attention to the issue. Instead, she just smiles like an silly woman on TV.

Apparently, rape prosecutions in the UAE, as is the case in similar Islamic countries, to get a conviction a confession or a testimony from an adult male witness is required.

What?! If it was just you and the rapist, would he really say anything? If you were attacked while with a female friend (as is the case in the story mentioned above), your friend - she can't be a witness? When she saw the whole thing? What if you were with 10 female friends who all saw it? All of their testimonies are still invalid? Is a female's testimony that much more insignificant as a male's testimony? How does this spell logic? It does not, of course. 

Again, I say, a trip to any of these countries or even comparatively lesser conservative or close minded countries such as Egypt, where sexual harassment is likewise very common, or even Turkey, should tell any female visitor that in these countries, they are still not treating women with respect or giving them the means to get justice when they are assaulted like this, sexually harassed and raped. 

What is supposed to be thought of as common decency, common sense and simply logical for us, remains archaic, brutal, barbaric and just disgusting in a lot of parts of the world.

For all the women who lived in these places, I wish the world would do more.