NGO protests after violence against women
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ALGIERS - Twenty associations have called the Algerian authorities after the assault of several women in Hassi Messaoud oil city of the Algerian Sahara.
- "We strongly condemn these crimes and the call the government to react urgently to ensure the protection of these victims," according to these associations.
- The statement said several women have recently been assaulted by groups of strangers who, masked and armed, "terrorize each isolated and helpless victims," stealing and molesting them after breaking into their home.
- A member of an association told AFP on condition of anonymity that the signatories of the statement had been alerted by a report in the daily El Watan, reports of such attacks. "But we have no precise data," she added.
- "Abused women are employed mostly in the base camps of foreign oil companies. They are maids, laundresses, cooks, and live alone in a slum," said the official.
- The associations point out serious incidents in July 2001 when women living alone in the slums of El Haich in Hassi Messaoud had been violently attacked by groups of men.
- "This repetition (..) of heinous acts against women, which seem to perpetuate itself as a « fatality », is possible only because in 2001 the handling of the case of Hassi Messaoud was reduced to a parody of justice relegating this tragedy to a vulgar simple new story," wrote the associations.
- They also denounced "the impunity of perpetrators" and "the silence of the institutions and local authorities" as well as "the laxity of society" when faced with violence against women in general in Algeria.
- Ennaharonline/ M. O.
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