On Monday, Egyptian Interior Minister Habib el-Adly commanded police to discontinue a practice in which poor and uneducated women seeking passports had to pass “virtue tests” conducted by vice squads before getting authorization to leave the country. el-Adly stated “It is embarrassing that such a procedure even existed,” and said that obtaining a passport was a “constitutional right” which should not be impeded.
For several decades, Egyptian police directed millions of poor and illiterate women to vice squad officers who then determined whether or not a woman may have engaged in prostitution or other “immoral activities.”
