Lebanese feminists protest after woman harassed over swimsuit

It should have been a quiet Sunday in May for Mayssa Hanouni Yaafouri, like many others. But her regular jaunt to Saida Public Beach in the Lebanese coastal town of Sidon was interrupted.

On May 14, two men calling themselves Muslim sheikhs approached Yaafouri and her husband and demanded that the couple leave because Yaafouri was wearing a one-piece swimsuit.

Yaafouri insisted and told the men that she can wear whatever she wants on a public beach. But the men refused to listen.

“They said it’s their law — the power of the sheikh,” Yaafouri told Al Jazeera.

The two men left, but returned about 10 minutes later with at least a dozen others. They started by kicking a soccer ball around the couple, around them and throwing sand in their direction.

A man stepped in to tell the clergy that it “is not in our religion to attack a woman,” Yaafouri said.

But it soon became clear that their group would not retreat, and the man who intervened advised the pair to leave the beach for their safety.

The incident sparked a protest this Sunday with about 70 feminists, activists and journalists from across the country gathered in Sidon to support Yaafouri.

“We’re just asking for our rights,” she said.

“My problem as a woman after what happened, after my incident, is only about my rights. It’s not political. It’s not a religion,” said the woman at the center of Lebanon’s renewed swimwear debate.

Reclaiming public space, whether in a bikini or burkini

Lebanese law doesn’t ban bathing suits in public, but women in the more conservative, Muslim-majority Sunni coastal city about an hour south of the capital Beirut tend to wear them in private.

There is a sign on the public beach stating that alcohol is prohibited and “decent attire” must be worn. However, Yaafouri has been going there for five years and had not encountered any problems wearing her swimsuit until now.

Diana Moukalled, a feminist journalist who collaborated with Yaafouri to organize Sunday’s protest, said there has been a recent increase in harassment of women on public beaches in Lebanon.

“Unfortunately, with the collapse of Lebanon, … we are seeing an increased will and appetite to harass and intimidate women,” Moukalled told Al Jazeera.

Public spaces such as public beaches, she said, are “occupied” and “segregated” by various “political parties, zealots, radicals and sectarian groups.”

The protest, Moukalled said, was both in support of Yaafouri’s right to dress as she pleases on public beaches, and to reclaim public spaces for all Lebanese women — whether they want to wear a bikini or a burkini.

Several MPs expressed their support for the women’s protest on Twitter.

Michel Moawad, a member of the Renewal Bloc in the Lebanese Parliament, tweeted that the incident “constitutes a flagrant violation of the freedoms guaranteed in the constitution” and “contradicts the history of the city and its true values”.

He called for the men who had approached Yaafouri and her husband to be handed over to the judiciary.

Mark Daou of the Taqaddom Party tweeted that “no one has the right to impose his opinion or belief in the public space”.

The countermovement

On Sunday, a group of about 100 to 120 male and female counter-demonstrators swarmed into the protesters, Moukalled said.

The municipality of Sidon had banned both the women’s protest and the planned counter-demonstration on Saturday.

The army stood between the two groups as the counter-demonstrators insulted the demonstrating women, Moukalled said.

She said she was appalled that the authorities treated both groups equally and said that one party is asking for their given rights to be respected while the other is encroaching on them.

Both women said there was also an online response to their protest.

Some users chose it advise women on “modest”, “responsible” swimwear that should be worn for your own safety. Others derided the women’s protest as a movement to make the beach a beach nudists.

“If we [were] While protesting, men were swimming on the beach and enjoying the right to free access to the beach while women were not allowed to,” said Moukalled. “It’s not acceptable.”