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Banana-sucking pop singer jailed for video ‘harmful to Egyptian morality’
(VIDEO)

Published time: 13 D
https://www.rt.com/news/412966-egypt-banana-shyma-singer/ec, 2017 12:45
Edited time: 6 Mar, 2018 15:20

Get short URL <https://on.rt.com/8una>

[image: Banana-sucking pop singer jailed for video ‘harmful to Egyptian
morality’ (VIDEO)]© shymafans © Instagram

An Egyptian court jailed a pop singer for two years for suggestively eating
a banana and appearing in her underwear in a recent music video.

Shyma's video for the song ‘I have issues’ caused immediate outrage in the
highly socially conservative country. Since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi
came to power in 2014, authorities have used wide-ranging morality laws to
clamp down on freedom of expression.

*“I didn’t imagine all this would happen and that I would be subjected to
such a strong attack from everyone, as a young singer… who has dreamt from
a young age of being a singer,”* Shyma wrote in a now-deleted Facebook
post. Egypt’s musicians union subsequently banned Shyma from performing,
reports Gulf News Egypt.

*“The content of the video clip is harmful to the Egyptian society,”* MP
Jalal Awara said at the time of the video's release, as cited by Gulf News
Egypt
<http://gulfnews.com/news/mena/egypt/egyptian-singer-jailed-over-banana-video-1.2140066>
..* “There must be a firm stance against promoters of this substandard art.”*



The young singer, whose real name is Shaimaa Ahmed, was arrested on
November 18, Reuters reports. Her trial in The Misdemeanour Court in Cairo
began on November 28 where she pleaded not guilty to charges of *“inciting
debauchery and producing a video that harms public morality.”* She alleges
that she was forced into the provocative poses by the video’s director, who
included the scenes in the final cut without her consent.

Both were fined (EG) £10,000 ($560) and sentenced to two years in prison.

Ten Egyptians were arrested in September for attending a concert in Cairo
at which the rainbow flag, a symbol for the international LGBTQ community,
was raised.

*“Egypt should stop dedicating state resources to hunting people down for
what they allegedly do in their bedrooms, or for expressing themselves at a
rock concert, and should instead focus energy on improving its dire human
rights record,”* Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa Director
at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/30/egypt-stop-anti-lgbt-crackdown-intimidation>
in September.

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