Lubna Ahmed Hussein is the Sudanese journalist who was arrested for dressing indecently by the Khartum police after she was found wearing a pair of jeans. The prescribed penalty for such an offence is 40 lashes, to which apparently some of the women accompanying Hussein submitted themselves. Hussein, however, decided to challenge the system and defend herself in court. What made the case so emblematically one of civil disobedience is that, as a journalist working for the UN, she could easily have claimed her immunity. Instead, she renounced her immunity to have her day in court and argued not only that her trousers were not indecent, but that nothing in the Koran grounded their condemnation. She was eventually condemned to one month imprisonment for refusing to pay a fine, the fine itself being an indication that, with so much international attention, the flogging was probably not judged opportune by the authorities. The fine was subsequently paid by the journalists' union, despite her having asked her relatives not to. The case seems to have been extraordinarily effective in bringing international attention on discrimination against women in Sudan. Hussein has anounced that she will continue challenging such laws.
No comments:
Post a Comment