TRIPOLI: Libyan Mohamed Abderraouf put a foot on his board and launched himself across Tripoli’s first skatepark, a welcome break in the conflict-battered capital with few facilities for bored young people.
“I can’t describe the joy,” said the 18-year-old, who bought his first skateboard in 2020 and had only been able to practice on street corners — until now. “I’m going to come a couple of times a week.”
The free, open-air facility opened over the weekend in central Tripoli, to the delight of young skaters who spent the afternoon sweeping up and down the halfpipes and taking selfies with their friends.
“I’m really happy, because before there wasn’t a dedicated place for skating,” said Rayan Al-Omar, 18, who has been skating for a year.
The US-funded facility was built by Make Life Skate Life, a charity that has set up “free-of-charge, community-built concrete skateparks” in Iraq, Bolivia and India.
Australian Wade Trevean, who designed the 800-square-meter Tripoli site, said volunteers had come from far and wide to help build it, a process that took about six weeks. “There are people from New York, people from Belgium, Germany or Australia,” Trevean said. “The happiness and positivity here are amazing.”
Local skaters played a role in the project too, part of a seaside park that also includes a cycling route and five-a-side football pitches.
The rest of the complex was completed a year ago on the site of a former base of the “Amazons,” the entourage of female bodyguards of deposed dictator Muammar Qaddafi, and seen as a symbol of the tyrant’s extravagance.
Since he was overthrown and killed in a 2011 revolt, Tripoli has endured successive waves of violence, meaning few resources were put into leisure facilities — already almost nonexistent under Qaddafi.
So almost two years since the guns fell silent following the last major battle on the edges of the capital, the opening of a skatepark in Tripoli generated a lot of attention.
Boards against boredom: Libya rolls out first skatepark
https://arab.news/6vmnr
Boards against boredom: Libya rolls out first skatepark
- Australian Wade Trevean, who designed the 800-square-meter Tripoli site, said volunteers had come from far and wide to help build it, a process that took about six weeks
Egyptian woman faces death threats for filming alleged harasser
- Case revives longstanding national debate in Egypt over harassment and violence against women
- A 2013 UN study found that 99.3 percent of Egyptian women reported experiencing harassment
CAIRO: A young Egyptian woman is facing death threats after posting a video showing the face of a man she says repeatedly harassed her, reviving debate over how victims are treated in the country.
Mariam Shawky, an actress in her twenties, filmed the man aboard a crowded Cairo bus earlier this week, accusing him of stalking and harassing her near her workplace on multiple occasions.
“This time, he followed me on the bus,” Shawky, who has been dubbed “the bus girl” by local media, said in a clip posted on TikTok.
“He kept harassing me,” added the woman, who did not respond to an AFP request for comment.
Hoping other passengers would intervene, Shawky instead found herself isolated. The video shows several men at the back of the bus staring at her coldly as she confronts her alleged harasser.
The man mocks her appearance, calls her “trash,” questions her clothing and moves toward her in what appears to be a threatening manner.
No one steps in to help. One male passenger, holding prayer beads, orders her to sit down and be quiet, while another gently restrains the man but does not defend Shawky.
Death threats
As the video spread across social media, the woman received a brief flurry of support, but it was quickly overwhelmed by a torrent of abuse.
Some high-profile public figures fueled the backlash.
Singer Hassan Shakosh suggested she had provoked the situation by wearing a piercing, saying it was “obvious what she was looking for.”
Online, the comments were more extreme. “I’ll be the first to kill you,” one user wrote. “If you were killed, no one would mourn you,” said another.
The case has revived a longstanding national debate in Egypt over harassment and violence against women.
A 2013 UN study found that 99.3 percent of Egyptian women reported experiencing harassment, with more than 80 percent saying they faced it regularly on public transport.
That same year, widespread protests against sexual violence rocked the Egyptian capital.
In 2014, a law criminalizing street harassment was passed. However, progress since then has been limited. Enforcement remains inconsistent and authorities have never released figures on the number of convictions.
Public concern spiked after previous high-profile incidents, including the 2022 killing of university student Nayera Ashraf, stabbed to death by a man whose advances she had rejected.
The perpetrator was executed, yet at the time “some asked for his release,” said prominent Egyptian feminist activist Nadeen Ashraf, whose social-media campaigning helped spark Egypt’s MeToo movement in 2020.
Denials
In the latest case, the authorities moved to act even though the bus company denied any incident had taken place in a statement later reissued by the Ministry of Transport.
The Interior Ministry said that the man seen in the video had been “identified and arrested” the day after the clip went viral.
Confronted with the footage, he denied both the harassment and ever having met the woman before, according to the ministry.
Local media reported he was later released on bail of 1,000 Egyptian pounds (around $20), before being detained again over a pre-existing loan case.
His lawyer has called for a psychiatric evaluation of Shawky, accusing her of damaging Egypt’s reputation.
These images tell “the whole world that there are harassers in Egypt and that Egyptian men encourage harassment, defend it and remain silent,” said lawyer Ali Fayez on Facebook.
Ashraf told AFP that the case revealed above all “a systemic and structural problem.”
She said such incidents were “never taken seriously” and that blame was almost always shifted onto women’s appearance.
“If the woman is veiled, they’ll say her clothes are tight. And if her hair is uncovered, they’ll look at her hair. And even if she wears a niqab, they’ll say she’s wearing makeup.”
“There will always be something.”
