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Facebook is one of the top social networking sites, and probably sees millions of invitations posted each day, but one put up by a journalist in the Sudan probably is unique: It invites her friends and the public to her flogging.
According to a report today from the Middle East Media Research Institute, Lubna Ahmad Hussein posted the invitation to her friends and supporters to "stir up a scandal around her case."
As WND reported just days ago, she was among the women – including many Christians – arrested and flogged for wearing trousers.
The MEMRI report said Hussein hopes the case "will shed light on Clause 152 of Sudan's 1991 criminal law."
"This is not a matter of a personal attack against me as a journalist, nor of preserving my personal dignity. Far from it … The issue has taken on a different character, [and I call] on the public to be [my] witness and [to judge for themselves whether this incident] is a disgrace for me or for the public order police. You will decide after hearing the charges and the prosecution witnesses, rather than [only] my side of the story," MEMRI reported the posting said.
A variety of Arabic-language reports documented the invitation.
"My case is the same as that of 10 young women flogged that day, as well as of dozens, hundreds, and maybe thousands others flogged in the public order courts because of their dress, day after day, month after month, and year after year," she wrote. "They emerge from there dejected, because society does not believe them – indeed, it will never believe that a girl can be flogged only because of the way she dresses.
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"The result [of this punishment] is [society's] death sentence against the girl's family; for her parents it means an attack of diabetes, hypertension, or heart failure. [Just think of] the girl's emotional state, and the disgrace that will follow her for the rest of her life – and all because [she wore] trousers. The number [of victims] will keep growing, because society refuses to believe that a girl or woman can be flogged because of what she wears," MEMRI reported.
The organization reported that such abuse of women was thrust into the national debate by the arrests of the women. Ten of those accused already have been given 10 lashes while three other cases, including the one against Hussein, await resolution.
"Incidents of this kind are widespread in Sudan and are usually disregarded by the local and global media," the organization said. "Hussein, however, decided to bring the issue to the attention of the public, and printed 500 invitations to her court proceedings and to the flogging to which she would likely be sentenced, distributing them to journalists and friends.
"In an interview with Al-Arabiyya TV, Hussein explained that she had given out the invitations because otherwise no one would believe that she was to be flogged for wearing ordinary clothes," MEMRI reported.
"I wanted the punishment to be executed in the presence of observers, so that they see for themselves why I was being flogged," she told Al-Arabiyya.
Source: WND
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