Death Threats and Isolation: The Cost of Fighting Sexual Violence in Iraq

Women say that despite social pressure and fear for their safety, they share stories of abuse to bring attention to the issue.

By Sally Nabeel BBC News Arabic, reporting from Baghdad

This story contains details of sexual violence that may be disturbing to some readers

"Get out of the car!" A woman screams and accuses a driver of exposing himself and making lewd comments as he passes. He is filming the scene on a busy street in Baghdad with his phone, and the camera captures him resisting her attempts to open it when he confronts her.

You can see this video along with similar items on the Instagram page of Sarah Jassim, an Iraqi women's rights activist. She posts them on behalf of women who complain of sexual harassment by Iraqi men and boys.

"Your camera is your weapon," he tells the BBC. "It's a way of documenting evidence in case a woman decides to sue her harasser, or at least a means of shaming him."

He says one of the videos he posted led to the arrest of the suspect, a police officer accused of harassing female students.

Jasem says that posting these videos is dangerous for both himself and the women involved. We have spoken to many victims of sexual abuse in Iraq who say that society often blames the victim.

Jassim says: "I have been threatened with death and I have also been threatened with acid attacks. I have been accused of inciting public obscenity because I encourage women to speak up in a society that expects us to remain silent.

He hardly leaves the house now, for his own safety, and instead spends hours playing with his dog.

She argues that tougher laws are needed, including ones that explicitly criminalize "harassment" and "gender-based violence" — terms that currently do not exist in the criminal code.

"Identifying the problem is the best way to address it," he says. "We need protection, abusers must be stopped."

Many Iraqi women have told the BBC they feel failed by the justice system and the police. According to a number of activists and lawyers we spoke with, pursuing legal action against a harasser or rapist is a long process in Iraq, with complicated procedures and uncertain outcomes.

Violence against women and girls in Iraq is "widespread and underreported," according to a May report by the United Nations Committee on Discrimination against Women, which called for stronger laws.

Among dozens of recommendations, it called on officials to repeal "discriminatory" laws that acquit rapists if they are married to their victims, and to hand down lesser sentences for murders in cases where a perpetrator commits so-called "honor killings."

Amal - which is not her real name - has been fighting in court for about five years. She accuses her ex-husband of repeatedly raping their daughter — who was under 18 at the time — at gunpoint.

She recalls her daughter's harrowing account of the incident, when she says the father entered the girl's room and placed his gun on her bed. She says he told her, "If I kill you, no one will hear you."

Sexual abuse has long been seen as a taboo subject in Iraq. I have been in contact with many survivors who say they prefer to turn it off because of possible family backlash. Others told us they were afraid to go to the police for fear of social stigma and possible harassment. But Amal was determined to get justice and rushed to the police to report the incident.

"He had a lot of bruises around his wrists because he was holding his hands so tight," Amal said. Whenever he wanted to scream, he covered his mouth with his hands.

Amal showed me medical records, including DNA evidence, that support her story.

Amal says another demonstration of her ex-husband's cruelty came when she overheard him telling a family member to "wash our shame" if he was arrested. The term is used in Iraq to refer to honor killings - committed in the belief that a woman has compromised the honor of a family.

Amal says she believes the father threatened to end her daughter's life "until the medical report is released and the rape is proven."

She says that her ex-husband is on the run and the court case is still open.

"I fought alone," says Amal. "I fought alone," she says, while her ex-husband hired several lawyers, but she couldn't afford them and her family turned a blind eye to the situation.

He no longer believes that the court verdict will be issued in his favor. "I just want him to stay out of my way forever," she says

Amal's daughter is luckier than some of the women who suffered domestic sexual abuse in Iraq because she has a safe place to live.

Many survivors have no independent income and nowhere to go. Iraq has very few shelters for abused women.

Who We Know Them is an organization founded by Yanar Mohammad, an internationally recognized women's rights advocate. He was killed by armed men outside his home in Baghdad last March. The perpetrators of this crime are still unknown.

Experts working for the United Nations Human Rights Council wrote in April that Muhammad had received death threats and online abuse for years that "appeared to be from extremist religious militias."

Activists repeatedly told us that targeted attacks on their colleagues have been on the rise in recent years.

Hana Edwar, another prominent women's rights activist, says she saw Muhammad only two days before he was killed. He says he has also been threatened.

"There are no laws, no protection, no justice for women in Iraq," she tells me.

"The problem in Iraq is not that women remain silent," Mustafa Saadoun, head of Iraq's Human Rights Watch, told the BBC. The problem is that when they do speak, there is very little system built in to listen.

"A woman who reports sexual violence first has to go through her family, then the police station, then the court, and at each of these doors she is likely to be told to settle quietly."

Among the Iraqi women who say they feel failed by the system is Samira - not her real name.

She tells the BBC that walking down the street leaves her on the sidelines after repeated harassment.

Once, she says, a man on public transport "was watching porn on his phone and put it in my face".

In another incident in Baghdad, she says a man once chased her in her car for more than 10 minutes. "It was very upsetting... I saw a police car. I went and told them what had happened. They said they had no authority to do anything."

Even though her mother is loving and supportive, Samira does not share any stories of sexual abuse with her. "If I tell my family, they immediately ask me not to leave the house to stay safe," she says.

He has lost faith in government institutions: "A lot of men, including police officers, have no problem with sexual harassment. If you're not a harasser, you're not a man, that's how they see it."