Samira Bellil

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

Bellil became famous in France with the publication of her autobiographical book Dans l'enfer des tournantes ('In the hell of the "tournantes" (gang-rapes)) in 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, outlying suburbs (banlieue) of French cities.

The book is available in American-English (translated by Lucy R. McNair) as "To Hell and back" with the subtitle "The Life of Samira Bellil".

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 .

As a teenager Bellil rebelled against the traditional constraints of her community and wanted to live freely as a young French woman.

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 raped by him again.

She did not report her rapes until two friends told her that the same gang had sexually assaulted them too. Samira 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. "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.

She died on 7 September 2004 of stomach cancer in Paris. She was 31.

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, she underwent a course of psychotherapy.

Bellil became close to the movement "Ni putes ni soumises" ("Neither whores nor submissives") and wrote her testimony in her book. She denounced the gang-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 youth worker.

The phenomenon of the tournantes

The expression tournante is a French word meaning "turning" (party). It is used as a slang term to characterize a gang rape. See fr:Viol en réunion#Le phénomène dit des « tournantes ».

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 a group 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.

Ni Putes Ni Soumises

Bellil helped found a young women's activist group called Ni Putes Ni Soumises ("Neither whores nor submissives") which has publicly addressed the issue of violence against young 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 women in French Muslim communities.

Official recognitions

File:Samirabellil-marianne.jpeg

Samira Bellil official photo as one of the 12 Mariannes representing the face of France

She was chosen as one of the new Mariannes, the new faces of France. Her portrait has hung outside the French National Assembly.

In 2005 a French school in l’Île-Saint-Denis was named in her honor: Ecole Samira Bellil.

Additional sources

Studies on the Phenomena of Tournantes

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