Samira Bellil

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Samira Bellil (November 24, 1972 - September 7, 2004) was a French Muslim feminist activist and a campaigner for the rights of Muslim girls and women.

Bellil became famous in France with the publication of her autobiographical book Dans l'enfer des tournantes (translated as In the hell of the tournantes (gang-rapes)) (2002). The book discusses the violence she and other young women endured in the predominantly Muslim immigrant outskirts of Paris, where she was repeatedly gang-raped as a teenager by gangs led by people she knew, and then abandoned by her family and friends. Her book is a portrayal of the predicament of young girls in the poor, largely North African outlying suburbs (banlieu) of French cities.

1 Life
2 Activism
3 The phenomena of the tournantes
4 Ni Putes Ni Soumises
5 Official recognitions
6 See also
7 Additional sources
- 7.1 Studies on the Phenomena of Tournantes

[edit] Life

Bellil was born to Algerian parents in Algiers, but her family migrated to France and settled in the Parisian suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis. Her father was jailed almost immediately and she was fostered by a family in Belgium for five years, before being called back to her parents "like a package"^{[citation needed]}. She found her father violent and distant, and her home life was not happy.

As a teenager Bellil rebelled against the traditional constraints of her community and wanted to live freely as a young French woman. It was dangerous behaviour, in an environment where a girl is expected to submit to the traditional role of women.

Samira was first gang-raped when she was 14, by a gang led by someone she knew. They beat her viciously and raped her all night. A month later, one of the most violent attackers in the gang followed her and dragged her off a train by her hair, while other passengers looked the other way. She was then brutally gang-raped by the gang members again.

She did not report her rapes until two friends told her that the same gang had raped them too. Reprisals are common and typical — apartments get burned down, younger sisters threatened, and families attacked — but Samira nevertheless found the courage to fight back and decided to appeal to the French legal system to prosecute her attackers. In the end, the gang members were sentenced to eight years in prison.

Bellil's parents, who believed they were shamed by her presence, expelled her from her house, and her community rejected her for exposing the ordeals faced by young Muslim women in their communities. "People outside the community don't know," Bellil has written. "And everyone in the community knows, but they won't say anything."^{[citation needed]}

Eventually, she found a psychologist who helped her. She had years of therapy, and describes how she decided to write her book to show other young women gang-rape victims that there was a way out. "It's long and it's difficult, but it's possible," she wrote in the dedication - to "my sisters in trouble". She used her real name and put her photo on the cover.

[edit] Activism

Soon after publishing her book, her parents threw her out in shame, and her neighbourhood rejected her[1]. Her book put the light on the difficulties girls face in the heavily immigrant and mainly Muslim cités. She wrote how, in the neighborhoods she came from, women who did not appear sufficiently "chaste" were considered in part to deserve the violence that was sometimes visited upon them. She underwent a course of psychotherapy.

Bellil became close to the movement "Ni putes ni soumises" (Neither whores nor subjected) and wrote her testimony in her book. She denounced the collective rapes (tournantes) and described how she overcame both her traumatic experiences and the need for revenge. She dedicated the book to her "girlfriends, so that they realize that one can overcome the traumatic" and to Boris Cyrulnik, her therapist.

She later became a teacher; she died on 7 September 2004 of stomach cancer in Paris. She was 31.

[edit] The phenomena of the tournantes

The word tournante is a French adjective meaning "turning". It is used as a slang term to mean a gang-rape.

According to the testimony of numerous victims, young Muslim women who stray from traditional conduct in the neighborhoods such as behaving and dressing like a westerner, or wanting to live as Europeans or refusing to wear the traditional clothing have been considered by some to be "fair game" for Tournantes. Young women have testified to having been threatened for acting like westerners and they are told they will face severe punishment.

The typical scenario that takes place is that the targeted young woman is drawn or lured into a secluded area where she is brutalized and repeatedly raped by groups of men who take turns raping her. The victim is usually insulted for behaving in a westernized manner. Typically the girls are often released afterwards, but rapes are often unreported for fear of reprisals against their families. In nearly every case on record the young victim who does report the crimes committed on them says that days later they would again be caught by the gang and gang-raped again.

In some cases the unlucky victim is killed, as in the case of Sohanne Benziane, a young 17-year-old Muslim girl burned alive in a basement after being brutally gang-raped in a tournante, or another who had her throat cut for refusing the advances of a local gang member.

Tournantes attacks have taken place in the immigrant suburbs of Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille and have received much coverage in the French and international press. Tournantes have also been reported throughout numerous immigrant communities in European countries such as Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, and in Australia. Non-Muslim women have also been victims of attacks.

Some have suggested that a combination of "cultural attitudes towards women" and bleak financial and social prospects for men in the suburbs, which are composed mainly of first-generation French citizens from Tunisia, Algeria, Spain, and sub-Saharan Africa, are responsible for the increasing sexual violence seen there. [2]

[edit] Ni Putes Ni Soumises

Bellil helped found a young Muslim women's activist group called Ni Putes Ni Soumises ("neither whores nor submissives") which has publicly addressed the issue of violence against young Muslim women in France. The group drew the attention of the French and European press as they organized marches and press conferences to bring attention to the tragic events happening to young women in the Islamic neighborhoods of France.

In part due to Bellil's book and the activism of Ni Putes Ni Soumises, the French government and the mayor's office in Paris began investigating the problem of violence against young Muslim women in French immigrant communities.