A Prominent Egyptian Gay Rights Activist Took Her Own Life While Exiled in Canada
By: Nathan Matsko
State College — Sarah Hegazy died last Sunday in Toronto, where she lived after fleeing her native Cairo. Hegazy rose to prominence in 2017 after being arrested for waving a rainbow flag at a rock concert. Sarah spoke out about her experiences in Egyptian prison, stating that she had been sexually assaulted, harassed due to her sexual orientation, and left with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after her stint in jail.
Though Sarah survived her ordeal and eventually made her way to Canada, the circumstances of her flight from her homeland left a deep mark on her. Still, Sarah remained heavily engaged with the fight for equality, both in Egypt and within her new home.
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While in banishment, Sarah expressed the pain of being so far from her family. Sarah’s mother died over the course of her exile, leaving her unable to return to Egypt to say goodbye.
Sarah’s suicide was coupled with a note written in Arabic, which circulated on social media. In the short note, she apologized to her friends and loved ones for “failing to survive”. The end of the note refers directly to those who had inflicted so much pain upon her.
“To the world—you were cruel to a great extent! But I forgive you.”
Sarah’s experience revealed much of the abuse, discrimination, and violations of human rights that Egyptian LGBT individuals face in the North African nation.
According to Rasha Younes of Human Rights Watch, LGBT people in Egypt suffer from consistent human rights violations. Though homosexuality is not illegal in the country, LGBT individuals have no protection under the law, making them all the more vulnerable to violent and hate-fueled crimes. Egypt enforces a “debauchery” law in order to crack down on those who do not conform to sexual or gender norms. LGBT individuals are often targeted for arrest and are picked up off of the streets.
The experience that Sarah braved in Egyptian prison is not out of the ordinary for those in the LGBT community that are arrested.
Like other countries in the region, Egypt is known to carry out rectal examinations, an unsubstantiated practice used to determine a person’s sexual activity and, therefore, their sexual orientation. Torture and sexual assault are also commonplace.
Many of those in Egypt’s general prison population are jailed on terrorism charges—meaning that LGBT individuals who are arrested are often kept in close proximity to radicalized religious extremists, putting them in further danger of abuse.
Police have been known to go out of their way to find and arrest LGBT individuals, particularly gay men. An article in the New York Times from 2016 describes how police officers will often download Grindr, a dating app for homosexual men. Posing as gay men, they will flirt and coerce someone they have matched with until that person chooses to meet up with them, at which point they are subsequently taken into custody.
Police have also worked to shut down businesses that host prominent members of the LGBT community in Egypt. These dangers, alongside the ever-expanding police state under General Sisi, leave few options other than fleeing the country entirely.