I’ll be honest: the protagonists of revolutions have always fascinated me. But when I heard Amina’s story I quickly realized that in her case the revolutionary charm is only a small part of the reasons why I look up to her actions with a certain admiration.
Preface: I do not necessarily agree with her means, at least not all of them, but I do certainly agree with her ideals and motives of her protest. I think that those who decide to spend the best years of their lives, what could be the most liberating and carefree years, trying to make a concrete contribution so that the world we live in becomes a better place, is at the very least a person whose story worth listening to.
Who is Amina?
Amina Sboui was born December 7 1994 in Tunisia, and she comes from a wealthy family belonging to the upper-middle class of the village bourgeoisie. I think the most appropriate words to describe her are essentially two: Amina is a rebel and an activist. Just in her nearly 21 years of life, she has dedicated herself to political protests against the dictatorship of Ben Ali and then the Islamic fundamentalist regime instituted after the so-called Tunisian Revolution (or Arab Spring). However, her commitment to freedom of expression and secularism for her country have always gone hand in hand with the struggle for women’s rights, not only in Tunisia but in the Arab world in general. So Amina is also a feminist. It’s actually because of some of her acts of protest that the name Amina became famous around the world in 2013. But one thing at a time…
The political struggle and the Arab Spring
From her early childhood, Amina has always been a smart girl with a strong character. In her book “My Body Belongs to Me” she explains that she’s always had a rebellious spirit and an uncontrollable desire to fight against what seems wrong.
It’s actually at the end of her childhood that she realizes that she doesn’t live in a free country, where people can not freely say what they think. Amina says she reached this conclusion at 13 years old: once she was told about the conflict in the near Middle East at school, she decided that she wanted to do something to express solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people, specifically by organizing a demonstration. The warning of the adults who tell her that she needs a permit from the police to demonstrate on the street do not stop a thirteen year old innocent girl: she goes to the police herself to ask for permission. The result is that she is laughed at and the slapped by the public officials. The most shocking thing for Amina is the fact that her relatives, friends and acquaintances ignored what had happened. For her, living in a country that is not free makes her gasp for air, but others do not care as long as they can continue their lives normally.
In high school she begins to get close to anarchist environments, she meets activist friends and organizes demonstrations within her school. She also gets in touch with true subversives, who organize actions to fight the government, through the father of one of her friends that helps her get into that environment. By spending more and more time at their house, she slowly learns how things work in the world, she meets intellectually stimulating people with whom she can discuss politics (which is never spoken in her home), therefore she eventually joins the community.
When in 2010 clashes begin to take place in the country – the so-called Arab Spring – Amina is actively involved in many protests. She is an activist: she acts. In January 2011, she was arrested in a square in Tunis for having attended a trade union demonstration, and she was brutally beaten by police officers. She was then released without criminal charges because she was a minor (she was 16 years old).
Following some tense episodes of the Revolution, from arrests to violence, to the heavy sentence of her family against her actions, she decided to continue her high school studies in a college outside Tunis, abandoning her birthplace. In this new environment, more closed than the one in which she grew up, she never misses a chance to get noticed for her grunge clothing, short and dyed hair, always proudly proclaiming her ideas and her rebellious nature. The dream of the Revolution, in which she has so much hope believing that freedom could really be achieved, is gone: religious fundamentalism has replaced the dictatorship of Ben Ali, but for Amina the battle are not over. Rather, it has just begun.
The feminist struggle and the online photos
In this period, while she was a student in college in February 2013, she was surfing the Internet when she came across some pictures that triggered something in her. What Amina finds are some photos from a protest of Indian women from Kashmir, who were demonstrating completely naked with a banner across their body saying “Indian Army Rape us”. It was a protest against the rapes, a huge problem in India, that is unfortunately often considered a normal thing. Showing your naked body in response to male oppression, to use women’s bodies in the field of political contestation was something that Amina had never seen before. She says in her book:
<<The women used their bodies showing them to men like open books. A woman’s body, so often despised, exploited, manipulated, abused, became a flag.>>
As she continued to get informed about this phenomenon, she became aware of the Femen group and got in touch with Inna, one of the leaders of the movement, to ask her to do something similar in Tunisia. Inna explains that an organized action takes time and preparation, but advised her to start acting alone to test the area and provoke a popular backlash before. So in February 2013, she uploads a photo to Facebook that shows her naked body from the torso up, with a sign on her chest: FUCK YOUR MORAL!
Amina says:
<<The idea that I would be linked to Femen, that I would have precipitated into a vortex, has not even touched me yet… In my blissful innocence, I was especially heartfelt.>>
As you can imagine, an earthquake began in her life. Between her many online contacts, some supported her action while others turned to insults and threats; nevertheless, this first gesture had limited visibility. Among the messages she received, one particularly stood out to her: “You’re a disgrace to your family… Your body does not belong to you!”. Then again something snaps in Amina’s head, namely the idea for a second photo. Two weeks after the first image, on March 8 (International Day of Women’s Rights) she publishes a second photo where she has the following writing on her chest: MY BODY BELONGS ME. IT’S NO ONE ELSE’S HONOUR. This time, however, Femen share her photos on their website: the world sees it.
A feminist because…
Amina explains that her determination to fight for the conditions of women in the Arab world has its roots in her childhood and her life experience. Since she was a child, she grew up in a society where gender roles weren’t well defined: she was taught to grow up as a girl, to dress as a girl, to behave as a girl, to always stay in place.
“Don’t talk to boys. Don’t were skirts that are too short. Don’t wear makeup!”
The only real accomplishment that is reserved for a woman is marriage, and divorce is never an option to be considered, even when love fades or worse when domestic violence is an everyday reality. But despite the heavy cultural imprinting, soon Amina understands that:
<<Everyone, male and female, were born with the same ability to reflect, to have an opinion, to argue. Of course at the time (as a child) I was too young to explain in words what I felt. But that revelation, the idea that we all have the same intelligence and especially the same inalienable right to freedom, regardless of gender, no longer has abandoned me and also has comforted me during my childhood, marked by some rather violent events.>>
The violent episodes that she refers to is the sexual abuse suffered as a child, from the son of a neighbour who babysat her, who pretended that the sex was a “secret game” that at the time she could not understand but which he had become persuaded to tell no one about. The abuses occurred in the code of silence of the adults around her: the boy’s father discovered what was happening, but in fact never did anything. When she was around 14 years old, Amina understand what had happened to her, she tries to talk with her mother, but even here she doesn’t get any help, as her mother accuses her of making everything up to cover her consenting sexual acts with adult men.
Amina feels dirty, guilty because she is impure, she felt ashamed for being there, for her naivety, for not saying anything. She remembers and recounts her despair, thinking that would end up in hell. The period of puberty, growth and discovery of sexuality is difficult and complicated, as she needed time to understand that the fault was not hers but of the people who had abused her. Getting out of the mindset that had been inculcated since childhood and that subtended that ir was still the fault of the victim, is very difficult:
<<It was disturbing to realize how I had been unwillingly marked by an unhealthy moral, that mortifies the body, femininity and sexuality. All these topics were taboo, and every child was to arrive alone to figure it out.>>
The beginning of the mishaps
With the publication of the photos on the Femen website, death threats from religious fundamentalists began to arrive, the family begins to worry and starts to try to bring her home. She is basically kidnapped and segregated from relatives, assaulted and slapped by her own family, she is cut off from the world. Amina explains that realistically all they wanted to do was to protect her: <<My parents never thought I was crazy. But they thought that making me look me mad was a good strategy to protect me from the vengeance of the Islamic extremists and those who thought I was a demon.>>
Consequently they make her undergo psychiatric treatment, forcing her to take antidepressants that inhibit her mentally and to undergo sessions of exorcism. Amina manages to escape from domestic prison and tries to live as she can, being hosted by acquaintances and other activists. In July 2013, however, she decides to go to Kairouan to the annual gathering of the Islamists, to demonstrate against religious fundamentalism. Segregation didn’t have an impact on this activist: she prepares a banner saying “Tunisia is a secular country. Its women are free”, but she was never able to present it.
In the middle of the event, in fact, she impulsively decides to write on the wall of a cemetery (next to the Great Mosque), the word “Femen”. This time she’s not able to escape: she is arrested and forced to face a tough process in which the Islamists accuse of desecrating a holy place, and indecent exposure.
Freedom
Thanks to the fame achieved at the international level as a result of her photographs, many people began to mobilize in order to help her out, both in Tunisia and in France. Some lawyers offer to assist her, and a spontaneous committee is formed outside the prison for help and support. At the end of the 75 days of captivity, she manages to retrieve her passport, which was dispersed at the home of relatives, and thanks to external support she flees to France.
Today Amina lives in Paris, where she is completing her studies and continues to be an activist and fight for what she believes.
The relationship with Femen
Amina’s relationship with the Femen group is undoubtedly one of the most controversial points of her history. She herself recounts in her book that while “it all started under their impulse, but later I moved away from their movement.” She never fully felt like one of them, and says that she never understood where their funding came from.
<<I found that Femen’s latest public actions were unintelligent, provocative without being constructive: what is the point, for example, to mimic a Muslim prayer in bare breasts in front of the Tunisian embassy in Paris? They were in France, where they didn’t risk anything, while my family was increasingly threatened in Tunisia. For me it was a sterile and selfish action. They used my case to make as much noise as possible, without first questioning the effectiveness of their actions […] This is why I decided to say publicly that I do not belong to the Femen group and that I didn’t always agree with their actions.>>
Dreams for the future – Because Amina is a person to admire
Amina has decided to tell her story in a book (My body belongs to me, published in Italy by Giunti) to explain what are the motives behind her actions. Its intent is to talk to as many people as possible to spread her message, to share her dream: to live in a free world. The acknowledgement in the book reads: “To the citizens of the world. To all those who believe in peace.” Her battles are universal, they are not limited to Tunisia and the Arab world:
<<I would like to live in a world where there is no homesickness because the whole world is our home […] I dream of a world without racism, without homophobia, without xenophobia, a world of love, without borders… a world of peace, of music. A world that has as a slogan “Freedom, dignity, social justice“, my favourite slogan during the Tunisian Revolution. First of all, because in Tunisia one must still shout this slogan loud and clear, considering that the citizens do not enjoy any freedom or dignity and social justice does not exist. But also because this slogan is universal and we can all feel it as our own.>>
In light of recent incidents in which humanity has shown its downside and most barbarous side, I think that deep down we still need so many young men and women who have the courage that Amina has. The courage to demonstrate for what you believe in and for what you dream, so a world of Peace, Respect and Equality.
