Beirut vigil for four women murdered in a week highlights Lebanon’s dark side
Tougher laws to curb violence against women in country where one in four have been raped
Dozens of people gathered outside Beirut’s national museum on Saturday night to light candles for a British embassy worker and three Arab women murdered in the past week in Lebanon.
The killing of Briton Rebecca Dykes last week prompted activists to press for more focus on violence against women.
Women’s rights campaigners held the vigil to mourn the victims, demand better laws, and to protest against the violence – including the three murders in northern Lebanon alone in the past week.
“Society refuses to listen to us or see us until our blood is spilt,” Leen Hashem, an organiser, told the crowd from the museum’s steps . “This violence is structural and systematic.
“Justice is not only arresting the criminal. Justice is for all this not to happen to us.”
One woman led a chant of: “Don’t tell me to cover up. Tell him not to rape me.”
Wafaa Al Kabbout stood on the sidelines holding a framed photo of her daughter Zahraa, 21, whose former husband shot her dead last year.
“Now my daughter is gone, she’s not coming back,” Ms Al Kabbout said. “But all these young women are our daughters, and there is still fear for the young women after them.”
The UN says that a third of women worldwide suffer sexual or physical violence.
A national study this year by the Beirut women’s rights group Abaad said one in four women have been raped in Lebanon. Fewer than a quarter of women who faced sexual assault reported it, it said.
“Little by little we are breaking the silence for women to come forward and talk about the violence,” said Saja Michael, programme manager at the group.
In the past five years, women have become more likely to report violence, Ms Michael said, but there was still stigma attached to sexual assault victims.
Part of the reason for increased reporting is that charities have set up new shelters and community centres, with psychological, legal, medical and other services, she said.
Lebanon’s parliament passed a law in 2014 that penalised domestic violence. But rights groups were outraged that authorities watered it down and that it fell short of criminalising marital rape.
Child marriage also remains legal in Lebanon. In August, parliament abolished a law that absolved rapists if they married their victims, joining other Arab states that repealed similar laws this year.
Activists welcomed it as a major step but said there was a long way to go on Lebanese legislation to protect women.
“Every day we are subjected to harassment, in college, on the street, everywhere,” said Ramona Abdallah, a university student at the vigil. “It really could be any one of us.”
Ms Dykes, 30, who worked at the British embassy in Lebanon, was found strangled beside a main road outside Beirut last weekend. A Lebanese Uber driver picked her up before assaulting and killing her, police said. A security official said the suspect had confessed.
Also last week, a Lebanese man shot dead his mother-inlaw and wounded his wife in their home in the Akkar region. He has been arrested.
Nazira Al Tartousi, 15, a pregnant Syrian, was found dead with a bullet in her neck, security sources in the north said. Her husband, the suspect, has denied killing her.
And Yaman Darwish, 22, died after sustaining gunshot wounds in another northern village, the sources said. The investigation showed she had also been choked.