- EGYPT
- March 10, 2016
- 8 minutes read
Anti-Coup Sinai Women Movement Message on International Women’s Day

As people around the globe celebrate the International Women’s Day, Egyptian women in general, and North Sinai women in particular, live the worst days in their history – since the July 2013 military coup that weighs heavily on the heart of Egypt and Egyptians.
The whole world sees and hears the rapidly worsening situation of Egyptian women under the mad military coup, at the hands of the putschist gang that has turned Egypt into a big dark dungeon for men, women and even children. The women of Sinai, in particular, have suffered much worse at the hands of the brutal putschists who continue to destroy their homes, displace women and children and kill or arrest and detain men.
In North Sinai, the people are now displaced, hounded, dead or wounded. In every home, there is bitterness, sorrow and pain:
1,500 extrajudicial killings
12,000 cases of arbitrary arrest
10,000 cases of documented detention
5,000 cases of burning or demolition of homes
4,000 Sinai families displaced (including children, women and elderly people)
3,000 cases of arrest "on suspicion"
2,000 cases of destruction and burning of civilians’ possessions (including 600 cars and 1,300 motorcycles)
Depopulated area razed to the ground is1500m (width) × 13.5 km
Coup forces also buried 100 water wells and destroyed dozens of acres of olive and fruit trees.
No place in the Sinai was safe from these criminal acts. General Sisi’s Forces randomly arrested hundreds of the finest young people in different parts of Sinai. They even chased ladies and girls and arrested them, subjecting some to forced disappearance.
At the hands of the military coup regime in Egypt, Sinai residents, and their women in particular, suffer horrific crimes including the loss of their husbands and children in extrajudicial killings by coup militias, arbitrary arrest, violent rape, displacement, severe torture. However, the women of Sinai have endured all this with unparalleled steadfastness and resilience that impressed the whole world in a new phase in Sinai women’s lives – full of sacrifices, suffering and challenges.
On this occasion, the Sinai Women Against the Coup (SWAC) movement stresses the urgent need for an international inquiry into the crimes and violations that have exceeded all limits – against Sinai women and girls in particular, and all Egyptian women in general – amid the shameful silence of women’s and rights organizations, which come out forcefully and fight fiercely for much less mundane rights and women issues in the West.
SWAC demands the free world put pressure on coup authorities in Egypt to release women and girls as well as men and boys of Sinai and all Egypt in the junta’s jails and stop all violations against Egyptian women, and all Egyptians, too.
SWAC vows women will continue to demand their rights until Egyptian dignity is restored and the goals of freedom, social justice and human dignity are achieved.
We are committed as ever to the principles of the Revolution, full reinstatement of democratic legitimacy, fair retribution for the blood of the martyrs, and the release of all political prisoners and detainees.
We hope the fascist military rule in Egypt will be ended soon. We hope democratically elected state institutions will be reinstated and achieve for the people of this one homeland a decent life.
God bless Egypt, democratic and free
God bless Sinai, steadfast and proud
Sinai Women Against the Coup (SWAC)