Mouse in fist, Arab women of the web make their war cry

(ANSAmed) - ROME - They are called Yasmina and Nur, Dalia and Asthma, Hana and Zadra, and they are putting their faces forward. These are some of the thousands of women who are joining a campaign in ever increasing numbers launched on the web October 1 called, ''The uprising of women in the Arab world,'' to promote equality and equal dignity in Arab countries, Middle East Online reports.

Ever since activist Diala Haidar (Lebanese) and her companions Yalda Younese (Lebanese), Farah Barqawi (Palestinian) and Sally Zohney (Egyptian) created a Facebook page so that all concerned women could express their solidarity and shared values, a tumultuous torrent of consensus has almost overwhelmed the organizers. In just a few days, membership has swollen to almost 40,000 and continues to grow.
The impression is that the initiative and its members have been born of the fear that, now the Arab Spring is over, the new governments to emerge after the dictators were chased away could soon dissolve its content regarding democracy and equality that had filled city squares.

Women took to the streets of Cairo and Tunis, Beirut and Sanaa, in Gaza and Algiers together with their husbands, brothers and other male companions, and were often brutally beaten just like the men. The terror now is that an intractable, acid backlash against the female universe is taking place that, until now, did not have voice or weight.
If one looks at what continues to happen in countries like Tunisia and Egypt, one can understand these fears. Last month in Tunis, a young woman who was raped by two police saw herself accused of ''indecent behavior''.

In Egypt, the most fundamentalist fringes are proposing to insert in the new constitution norms like marriages for young girls, legalization of genital mutilation, and attacks on women's rights in work and education.
Thus the organizers have taken women from real squares to a virtual square, to express and demonstrate on the internet what they can not show in society, and answer why they support the ''The uprising of women in the Arab world''.

The endless list of ''I Like'' has filled up the site, with faces young and smiling women, women less young and sometimes wearing a veil, but all with eyes directed on who is watching them. They're not hiding, but putting their faces forward, loading up files, leaving their thoughts and opinions. The avalanche of posts - also from many men, one of whom hid his identity out of embarrassment - ask to give women voices and equality; they refuse impositions, like the veil, or to remain behind in the shadows. In Arabic, but also in English and French, the young women write, ''I refuse the idea of having to declare whether or not I am a virgin before getting married''; ''Enough with these men with stone-age mentalities''; ''Women are made to be loved, not used; to be cuddled, not abused; sexual violence must be punished, not excused''.

All this, Haidar affirms, gives hope because ''It reinforces the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW)''. She relies on one of the slogans of the campaign, ''We must continue the revolution to eliminate male chauvinism that transforms every man into a dictator over his wife, daughter, sister and even his mother''. (ANSAmed).