Murder in Kuwait Spurs Outrage Over Violence Against Women
Kuwait’s National Assembly building (Wikipedia)
Kuwaiti police arrested Fahad Subhi Mohammed on April 27 for the murder of 32-year old woman Farah Hamza Akbar. The crime rekindled heated discussions of discrimination against women in Kuwait and their subordinate treatment within the legal system in the Gulf state.
Akbar had filed two harassment complaints against Mohammed following her family’s refusal of his marriage proposal. These charges resulted in his arrest and then release on bail shortly before the murder. Kuwait’s Interior Ministry alleges that sometime after his release, Mohammed kidnapped Akbar before stabbing her and leaving her in front of a hospital. He then fled the scene.
After the incident, police arrested Mohammed who, according to the Interior Ministry, confessed to the crime. The killing, however, has also exposed deep social tensions within the country. A video of Akbar’s distraught sister, screaming that she had informed the authorities of the danger Mohammed posed, went viral on social media. Within hours, Farah Akbar’s name was trending on Twitter, and hundreds of Kuwaiti women expressed their outrage at the tragedy.
Fashion blogger Ascia al-Faraj shared the video of Akbar’s sister and tweeted, “Kuwait is unsafe for women. They will harass us until they murder us.” Other social media users blamed authorities for the murder, charging that they should not have released Mohammed after previously threatening to kill Farah Akbar several times. “A woman was killed in broad daylight and in Ramadan...Why can't the government protect women? There's a constitution between us and the state, a constitution that promises equality,” said Sahar bin Aly, a women’s rights activist in Kuwait’s capital.
The murder comes on the heels of a months-long nationwide campaign confronting violence and sexual harassment. Kuwait’s own MeToo movement provided a voice to many activists to share their stories on the normally taboo subject of violence against women, with the most prominent platform being an Instagram account named “Lan Asket” (“I will not be silent” in Arabic). Dozens of testimonies on social media offered personal experiences of stalking, harassment, or assault.
Activists have also taken aim at Kuwait’s legal code, which heavily disadvantages women. One particularly notable statute only gives a maximum sentence of three years in prison for a man who kills his wife or sister if they had committed adultery, and the crime only stands as a “misdemeanor.”
In a country where women only gained the right to vote in 2005, there remains much to accomplish and plenty of inhibitions vis-à-vis gender equality. Demonstrators nonetheless have seen some victories, with lawmakers passing the country’s first domestic violence ordinance in August 2020. A record 33 women also ran for seats in Kuwait’s parliament last year. Al-Faraj praised these new developments, saying, “We have a problem of harassment in this country, and I have had enough.”