Moroccan Teen Self-Immolates After Her Rapists Released

Eight men who raped Khadija al-Swaida reportedly threatened to release pictures of the rape unless she dropped the charges

Khadija al-Swaidi. (Photo: © Screenshot from video)

A teenage Moroccan girl set herself on fire after her rapists were released from prison.

She was pregnant when she died.

"Eight young men abducted the girl," according to the Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH) "and then took turns to rape her."

The attack took place last year when Khadija al-Swaidi, from Ben Guerir, 43 miles north of Marrakesh, was 16.

Despite the police arresting seven suspects, shortly followed by an eighth, a prosecutor decided to grant the suspects a provisional release.

Why? What possible reason could the prosecutor have for releasing those men? He should be investigated.

They then threatened her saying they would “publish pictures of the rape which they had taken with their mobile phones unless she dropped the complaint against them" according to the head of the AMDH Omar Arbib.

Distraught, she set herself on fire and died later from the burns while in hospital.

In 2011, Morocco adopted a new constitution enshrining gender equality into law. In 2014, the country repealed a law that allowed rapists to escape justice as long as they married their victim.

Morocco launched a probe into her death and re-arrested six of the suspects.

No Words in North Korea for 'Rape' or 'Sexual Harassment'

Not because it doesn't exist, but because
it is completely ignored

Multiple defectors say the absence of terminology exists

in a society where sexual offenses go unpunished

Young women in North Korea are helpless when it comes to sexually offensive behavior, according to defectors. File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

By Elizabeth Shim

SEOUL, July 12 (UPI) -- There are no words to describe crimes such as rape and transgressions like sexual harassment in North Korea, according to defectors in the South.

New Focus International, a news service founded by a North Korean defector, interviewed resettled North Koreans who said they had "never heard of" terms like rape and sexual harassment until they arrived in the South.

The concepts don't really have a place in North Korea, according to the press report.

One defector identified by the surname Jang, originally from the North Korean border town of Musan, said North Korean security guards often tell women to "make do with their bodies" if they don't have money.

"They often joke that if women have nothing to give, they can at least give up their bodies," Jang told New Focus.

Security agents in North Korea who can wield power often call young women into their office to feel up their breasts.

Women are often helpless and cannot file complaints, Jang said.

"That is because accusing people in power of wrongdoing can undermine their own personal safety," the defector said.

Jang also witnessed a woman being sexually harassed by multiple North Korean soldiers in a privately operated bus.

When the woman raised her voice in protest, the soldiers started verbally attacking her and invited other soldiers to sexually humiliate her, Jang said.

Park Ok-kyung, a defector from the North Korean city of Hamhung, said she did not realize what sexual harassment was until she resettled in South Korea.

Park said when she first began her life in the South she was harassed sexually as she worked at a part-time job in a restaurant.

Two years later, she said she now could identify sexually offensive behavior.

North Korea declared gender equality in 1946 but defector testimonies show women are not being protected from abusive and violent behavior.

In March a female North Korean defector Kim Eun-mi testified that a group of North Korean soldiers recently gang-raped a North Korean woman crewmember on a train.

Finland Teaching Migrants How to Behave

Great program, should be compulsory right across Europe

By Emma Jane Kirby
BBC News, Helsinki

Johanna teaches immigrants in a basic classroom

Migrants arriving in Finland are being offered classes on Finnish values and how to behave towards women. Concerned about a rise in the number of sexual assaults in the country, the government wants to make sure that people from very conservative cultures know what to expect in their new home.

Johanna is one of those energetic, animated teachers whose cheerful energy lures even the most reluctant pupil into engaging with the lesson. She uses both her hands to stress her meaning and she always softens any difficult points with a smile.

"So in Finland," she says softly, "you can't buy a wife. A woman will only be your wife if she wants to be - because here women are men's equals."

Her pupils, all recently arrived asylum seekers at this reception centre hidden away in the snowy depths of the Finnish forest, watch her carefully - and I watch them. Some of the young Iraqi men, who already speak good English and passable Finnish, nod sagely. Others, particularly the older men, stare at one another with raised eyebrows as Johanna's words are translated into Arabic for them. One man, hunkered down inside his black ski jacket seems to be taking notes while there's a faint smile on the lips of the only headscarfed young woman in the room.

Raasepoori reception centre in the Finnish forest

"But you can go out to the disco with a woman here," adds Johanna brightly. "Although remember, even if she dances with you very closely and is wearing a short skirt, that doesn't mean she wants to have sex with you."

A Somali teenager pulls his woolly hat over his ears and cradles his head in his hands as if his brain can't cope with all this new information.

"This is a very liberal country," he says incredulously. "We have a lot to learn. In my country if you make sexy with a woman you are killed!" He turns to his neighbour, a Malian man of a similar age to gauge his reaction.

"It's quite amazing," the Malian nods. "In my country a woman should not go out without her husband or brother."

Woman at a disco in Finland  Image copyright Alamy

Johanna turns her attention to homosexuality and the Iraqi men on the back row - it's always the back row - begin to giggle and snigger.

It might seem like a bit of a pantomime, but reception centres in Finland take these voluntary manners and culture classes extremely seriously. If men arriving from very different and conservative cultures are not immediately made aware that Finland has its own set of customs and rules which must be respected, then they will never integrate, warns Johanna.

The men may groan when she tells them that Finnish men share the housework, but they no longer baulk when they see their taxi driver is a woman. Since the autumn, when Johanna first started giving these classes, female asylum seekers frequently approach her to complain that their husbands are not treating them in the Finnish way. The men are also versed in Finnish criminal law so they know exactly what to expect if they touch a woman inappropriately.

And that's why these classes are backed by the interior ministry and the police. Last autumn three asylum seekers were convicted of rape in Finland, and at the new year there were a series of sexual assaults and harassments similar to those in Cologne and Stockholm. Victims reported that the perpetrators were of Middle Eastern appearance - something Helsinki's deputy chief of police, Ilkka Koskimaki decided to go public with.

"It's difficult to talk about," he admits as we drive in a patrol car through the icy streets of the city. "But we have to tell the truth. Usually we would not reveal the ethnic background of a suspect, but these incidents, where groups of young foreign men," as he puts it, "surround a girl in a public place and harass her have become a phenomenon."

Refugees walk from a public transport centre to a reception centre in Tornio,
north-west Finland, September 2015.  Image copyright Getty Images

More than 32,000 migrants arrived in Finland in 2015

The police van pulls up at a downtown reception centre where Koskimaki's preventive policing team give similar classes to Johanna's. A jumble of migrant men smoking on the snowy steps in flip-flops, hastily scarper indoors, clearly alarmed by the police presence. A muscly Iraqi man in gym kit approaches me cautiously and asks me in a whisper why I feel the need to visit the centre with three police bodyguards. Please, he pleads, please don't think all asylum seekers are dangerous because of a few criminals.

The lesson at Raasepoori reception centre is drawing to a close and the asylum seekers have been given optional homework to help them read up on Finland's sexual equality laws. As we leave the class, an Iraqi man in a colourful bomber jacket shakes my hand.

"It's great in Finland," he says "But when I marry, my wife will be a housekeeper who will cook the food I like - and she certainly won't go to discos."

Raasepoori, Finland