Sudan's 'trouser lady' continues to fight decency laws - washingtonpost.com

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Defiant 'trouser lady' continues to fight decency laws

By Stephanie McCrummen
Saturday, November 14, 2009

KHARTOUM, SUDAN -- A few months after she was arrested for wearing pants, Lubna Hussein was lounging around her home in a shady, upper-class neighborhood in this capital along the Nile River. It was a hot afternoon, but the 34-year-old Sudanese journalist was wearing thick jeans adorned with sequins and embroidered flowers.

"Since all this happened, I will only wear pants," she said in the calmly defiant manner that led to her fleeting global celebrity as "the trouser lady," and a less-publicized backlash that has included anonymous death threats and newspaper columns calling her a prostitute. "If you have something to fight for, you can lose your life."

In July, Hussein attempted to shame Sudan's Islamist ruling party by inviting reporters to view her public flogging, a punishment under Islamic law that is sometimes applied here -- by leather whip or bamboo cane of the sort used on camels -- to women deemed to have violated decency laws.

As news spread, her court date drew crowds of women and men protesting in solidarity, and she received support from the likes of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Sudanese women started Web sites such as iamlubna.com, and some compared her to Rosa Parks, the American civil rights icon who challenged segregation laws.

Then, the campaign fizzled. Eager to dispense with the negative publicity, a judge sentenced Hussein to jail instead of flogging. She was released days later, and the attention surrounding her case settled into discussions among women about their experiences with Khartoum's vaguely worded decency laws, and the politics of keeping public order.

"When I was young, I used to see people free and wearing any kind of clothes they want," said Hussein, who is Muslim. "Some women were wearing miniskirts. But since the Islamists came, women don't have that power."

Soon after Omar Hassan al-Bashir came to power in a 1989 coup, Islamists in his party began asserting tight control across Sudan, a country whose north, including Khartoum, is mostly Muslim.

In Khartoum, local authorities showed their loyalty by adopting public-order laws requiring, among other things, "decent" dress and conduct.

Over the years, the public-order police have been relatively tolerant, and these days, women's fashions vary widely in the capital, from long black burqas and gloves to skinny jeans. Trousers are fairly common, but head scarves, long skirts and wraps remain standard attire for most Muslim women here. At times, though, police have implemented the law arbitrarily and even bizarrely.

For months, Sudanese women recalled, a man wearing a red bandana around his head and a whip on his waist was posted at a crowded bus station. He would call out to women he decided were showing too much wrist or ankle and whip them on the spot. Sometimes he would spit on them, they said.

Naglaseed Ahmad, who was among those protesting in support of Hussein's case, recalled being arrested as she was demonstrating against the drafting of her fellow university students into the Sudanese army. A judge found her guilty of violating decency laws and ordered another woman, accused of being a prostitute, to administer 10 lashes in front of him.

"The judge, he was smiling the whole time," Ahmad recalled. "He was enjoying these lashes."

Some women say they are harassed by ordinary men who fancy themselves as sort of a vigilante force. Nahid Mohammed al-Hassan Ali, a psychiatrist who demonstrated with Ahmad, said men who know her shout out "Hey, professor!" when her head scarf slips.

Last year, about 40,000 women were arrested on charges of violating public-order laws, according to human rights groups. They say most cases involved Khartoum's poorest women, such as those who sell tea under trees along the capital's sandy streets.

Hussein's case was somewhat unusual in that she is a relatively wealthy professional. She was enjoying an evening of music with friends at a restaurant when police showed up and began picking women out of the crowd, asking them to parade across the room.

Police said Hussein's green pants -- covered to mid-thigh by a shirt -- were too tight. She and several other women were hauled off to the police station. That night, Hussein, angry not only at her situation, but also at seeing a 16-year-old girl being harassed, crying and wetting herself out of fear, began planning her campaign to overturn the decency laws.

"I decided to cry, but in a different way," she said.

Hussein's more moderate critics say the public-order laws reflect values accepted by a majority of people in Khartoum and dismiss her cause as elitist.

There are harsher critics, though. Women demonstrating on the day of Hussein's trial were met by a counter-protest by men, including some carrying containers of acid. "They said, 'After this trial we will use this acid,' " Ali, the psychiatrist, said with a weary laugh. "We are just familiar with this attitude."

At this point, she and others consider the public-order laws another repressive tool of a ruling party aiming to keep society under control.

Ali and others said that changing these laws will be difficult but that there are small signs of revolt. Around Khartoum, women refer to the gap between a short shirt and a skirt as "the separation of church and state." If a skirt is too short, or too open, they mockingly call it "the failure of civilization."

"It's a kind of mutiny, I guess," Ali said. "Because we've been treated so badly."