Mai Walid, a third-year secondary student, is living with suppressed anger and strong indignation after being body-searched more than four times while sitting her Arabic language exam on Saturday 22 June. The girl, not yet twenty, finished the exam and returned home to tell her father about the searches she had been subjected to, which she described as humiliating, both before entering the exam hall and during the exam, and her father angrily asked why she had not filed a complaint or a police report over the violations she suffered.
Walid tells Zawia3: “I wear the niqab, and I know well that lifting the niqab and revealing the face is a routine procedure. When I was asked to lift the niqab at the school gate, I complied with the request without anger or tension, because I know the importance of this procedure in verifying students’ real identities.”
She adds: “What upset me was that the body searches continued, repeated more than four times before and during the exam, simply because the invigilator suspected I was carrying an earpiece. Even though I was searched physically and electronically and they found nothing, the searching continued in a humiliating way until the last ten minutes of the exam.”
Similar Cases and Anger on the Ministry’s Page
The Thanaweya Amma (general secondary) exams for the current 2024 academic year began on 10 June, with nearly 745,000 students sitting them across 1,981 exam centres in the various governorates.
Mai Walid was not the only one subjected to body searches, whether at the doors of exam halls or inside them. Zawia3 monitored angry comments from Thanaweya Amma students on the page of the Ministry of Education after the Arabic exam, with the reasons for anger ranging from power cuts during the exam to the absence of fans or air conditioning in hot weather, which doubled the pressure on students. Among the angry comments were also complaints from female students who were body-searched during the Arabic exam.
Over the past two years, students have repeatedly complained about the body searches that precede entry into exam halls; female students expressed this in their comments on the Ministry of Education’s posts following the progress of the Thanaweya Amma exams.
Reham Abdel Halim tells us what she went through during one of last year’s Thanaweya Amma exams: “During the chemistry exam last year, the hall supervisor insisted on searching my arm after he suspected I had earphones because I had put my hand on my ear.”
She adds: “The supervisor moved his pen sharply and tensely over parts of my arm to make sure there were no earphones or means of cheating, which made me very nervous and made me lose my concentration, so I could not remember the answers. I fell into a bad psychological state that affected the rest of the subjects, and as a result I failed and had to repeat the school year.”
Abdel Halim, who is sitting the Thanaweya Amma exams for the second year in a row, has not forgotten the violations she suffered last year. She says she is still being body-searched, which increases her tension and anger, but she does not have the luxury of refusing, as she puts it.
Despite repeated complaints about the body searches students are subjected to, until the time of writing the Ministry of Education had taken no steps to limit this procedure. Minister of Education Reda Hegazy had announced the mechanisms for searching students on entry before the Thanaweya Amma exams began, stressing that searches would be carried out with an electronic wand, with instructions not to search again during the exam sessions, although passing the electronic wand between the rows to detect any electronic devices would be allowed.
At the Doors of Exam Halls
Commenting on these procedures, Aziza El-Taweel, a lawyer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, describes the body searches students are subjected to at the doors of exam halls as “indecent assault” that requires holding the perpetrators accountable under the law, and says the Ministry of Education must investigate the matter without delay or evasion.
She says she has seen complaints from students who were body-searched in a “humiliating” way when entering exam halls or during exams, explaining that some students complain that the searches reach sensitive parts of the body, for both girls and boys, and that this complaint has recurred for two years, with this being the third.
The EIPR lawyer adds that Thanaweya Amma students complained about the same problem last year, without any attention or official action from the ministry, which, according to El-Taweel, should have urgently announced an investigation to verify the facts, establish the truth and hold those responsible for these practices to account.
El-Taweel stresses that the humiliating body searches students undergo at the doors of exam halls constitute the crime of indecent assault under Articles 268 and 269 of the Egyptian Penal Code, pointing out that the Egyptian legislator increased the penalty for perpetrators of these practices and crimes when they hold authority (in this case the invigilator or supervisor, teacher or school principal) and touch students’ bodies on the pretext of searching to prevent cheating. The penalty for this crime can reach seven years of aggravated imprisonment.
Article 268 of the Egyptian Penal Code states: “Whoever indecently assaults a person by force or threat, or attempts to do so, shall be punished with hard labour for three to seven years. If the victim of the said crime has not reached the full age of 16, or the perpetrator is one of those referred to in the second paragraph of Article 267, the penalty may be raised to the maximum limit prescribed for temporary hard labour.”
Article 269 of the Egyptian Penal Code also states that “whoever indecently assaults a boy or girl who has not reached the full age of 18 without force or threat shall be punished with imprisonment, and if the victim has not reached the full age of seven, or the perpetrator is one of those referred to in the second paragraph of Article 267, the penalty shall be temporary hard labour.” The second paragraph of Article 267 states that if the perpetrator is one of the victim’s ascendants, one of those responsible for her upbringing or supervision, one of those with authority over her, or a paid servant of hers or of those mentioned, he shall be punished with life imprisonment with hard labour.
The Speak Up initiative, a non-governmental feminist initiative, had called on female Thanaweya Amma students during last year’s 2023 exams to report body searches they were subjected to before entering exam halls. It urged girls who were body-searched to report it to the head of the exam committee or the school principal, and, if no action was taken, to send a complaint to the Ministry of Education and the Cabinet.
Psychological Trauma Instead of Help
For her part, psychiatric consultant Olfat Allam believes that body-searching students before and during exams increases their anxiety and tension, especially since the atmosphere of the Thanaweya Amma exams, popularly known in Egypt as the “year that decides your fate”, is stressful enough.
She tells Zawia3 that the Ministry of Education should have helped students instead of increasing the pressure on them, by providing a calm environment that aids concentration, instead of the stressful atmosphere created by invading students’ private space and violating their bodies.
The psychiatric consultant explains that body-searching students has bad negative effects during exams, including tension, anxiety, poor concentration and a feeling of humiliation, as well as negative long-term effects for both sexes, who are treated as if they were highly dangerous criminals. She stresses that body searches are not the only or an effective way to detect cheating, but “entrench humiliation and the violation of our children’s bodily privacy, and the greatest impact falls on girls, who will find it hard to forget being subjected to this act, which is neither legal nor humane at all,” calling on the ministry to take firm and swift action to stop this violation, out of fairness and respect for the bodies of the students who were violated.
In the same context, psychological consultant Heba Ibrahim, professor of clinical psychology at Minya University, says that when anxiety rises beyond a certain point, a person loses the ability to concentrate, and some may suffer a panic attack, in which a person feels a racing heartbeat, trembling and fear of death, or symptoms similar to a heart attack.
She stresses that there are psychological effects that may stay with students, such as sleep disorders, loss of appetite, frequent crying and fear of dealing with others. According to her, physical abuse causes psychological abuse, and body-searching students creates a feeling of humiliation paralleled by a feeling of submission and coercion, because they are unable to refuse for fear of being barred from the exam halls and losing their academic future.
Thanaweya Amma exam centres carry out thorough body searches of students to ensure they do not have mobile phones or any electronic means of cheating, in an attempt by the Ministry of Education to counter the use of technology, including phones and earphones, in cheating, especially with the spread of exam leaks in recent years.
The Law on Combating Acts that Disrupt Examinations, No. 205 of 2020, imposed heavy penalties for cheating or attempted cheating in the Thanaweya Amma exams, punishing anyone who prints, publishes, broadcasts, promotes or circulates the 2024 Thanaweya Amma exams and their answers, or helps to do so, by any means, with the intent of cheating or disrupting the general order of the exams, with imprisonment of no less than two years and no more than seven years, and a fine of no less than EGP 100,000 and no more than EGP 200,000.
Anyone who helps in attempting to publish, print, broadcast or promote the questions of the 2024 technical diploma exams (technical secondary) shall be punished with imprisonment of no less than one year and a fine of no less than EGP 10,000 and no more than EGP 50,000. The law also punishes a student who cheats or attempts to cheat, or commits any of the acts mentioned above, by barring him from the exam round he is sitting and the following round in the same year, and he is considered to have failed all subjects.
Community Initiatives for Secondary Students Because of Power Cuts
This year’s Thanaweya Amma exams are taking place in extremely difficult, exceptional conditions because of repeated power cuts under the load-shedding plan announced by the government in Cairo.
Repeated power cuts to homes lasting between three and six hours prompted several places, including the Mersal charity foundation, churches, mosques, unions and cafés, to open their doors to Thanaweya Amma students to study until the end of the exam period, which ends on 20 July.
Several governorates have launched initiatives to provide safe havens for Thanaweya Amma and vocational and technical diploma students during power cuts, offering free air-conditioned halls in public libraries, youth centres, clubs and elsewhere to help students study and prepare for exams and protect them from the extreme heat the country is currently experiencing, which has reached 50 degrees Celsius in some governorates and caused some deaths. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina also announced that it would open its doors every day of the week until 10 pm and provide free study spaces, and its director, Ahmed Zayed, said the library’s halls can accommodate about 3,500 students, and that entry is by registering the exam seat number. The Greek Club and the Coptic Orthodox Bishopric (in the churches of the Virgin Mary on Mohamed Ali Street, Abu Sefein in El-Zohour district and Mar Girgis in Port Fouad) in Port Said Governorate (one of the Canal governorates) also announced that they would open their doors to students free of charge.
A number of journalists asked the Egyptian Journalists’ Syndicate to extend its working hours, which end at around midnight every day, and to provide spaces for their children to help them prepare for studying.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly stressed that the crisis is on its way to being resolved, explaining that the crisis and the increase in power cut hours were caused by an unprecedented rise in energy consumption and the halt of gas production from one of its fields in a neighbouring country he did not name.
