Republican Sue Helm Circled PA Unite Against the War on Women, Says Sudanese Activist Watching Her Hummer

PA State Rep. Sue Helm, representing the 104th Legislative District in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, circling the April 28, 2012 Harrisburg Unite Against the War on Women rally “multiple times” according to the North African women’s rights activist caught in the lower right-hand corner of the image. He is well-known to one of the rally organisers Anne Enke. The duo has worked together to stop the flogging of an estimated 40,000 women a year in Sudan,. The WOW PA event was the first rally for women observed by Enke’s friend, who is dumfounded that the war on women is also being waged on American women and not only women in the Arab world and Sudan specifically. Image credit goes to Angela Dicks, partner of Democratic candidate Kelly Jean McEntee, running for PA State Representative in the 105th district, a speaker at the WOW PA rally and sponsor of Emma’s Revolution, a headline act of multiple entertainers providing music for rally goers.

Sue Helm Circling April 28 Harrisburg WOW Rally

Although PA State Rep Sue Helm told Harrisburg The Patriot-News reporter Sue Gleiter that she “didn’t participate in the rally”, she was observed circling the capitol in her Hummer multiple times by the man captured in the lower right corner, who is my dear friend from North Africa.

For the present, this man must remain nameless. Because of our ongoing work on behalf of the estimated 40,000 women flogged each year in Sudan, my friend would be jailed or killed if his identity is revealed.

Helm continued talking to Gleiter, saying “I think they have made too much of this honestly.” Helm thinks “women’s rights cross both parties.”

In talking with me about the event and my posting his image online, my friend expressed satisfaction that he was associated with the Sue Helm photo and the poignant, huddled together mother and daughter probably, seeming under surveillance by Helm and her Hummer.

Committed to changing the lives of women under assault by Islam in Sudan, my friend’s is the polar opposite of Helm’s ideology, which supports forcing women to have unnecessary medical procedures mandated by governments dominated by religious ideology that oppresses women.

As an organizer of the Harrisburg rally, bringing Republican pro-choice women to the rally was a top personal priority of mine. The party that funded Planned Parenthood from its beginning, whose judges passed both ‘Roe v Wade’ and ‘Griswold v Connecticut’ couldn’t find one of their own to speak at the Unite Against the War on Women Harrisburg Rally in favor of women’s right to choose.

Helm is one of many legislators of both parties who changed their minds regarding a provision in a bill that would require women to have an ultrasound before an abortion after a remark made last month by Gov. Tom Corbett.

The governor came under fire after saying “You just have to close your eyes as long as it’s on the exterior, not interior” in regards to women viewing the ultrasounds. His spokesman said the governor’s comments were taken out of context.

“When the governor opened his mouth and said ‘Look away,” I said I think our governor is a good governor, but in this case I need to jump off of this bill,” Helm said.

Sue Helm circled multiple times in her Hummer, says witness.

The photo was taken by Angela Dicks, partner of Democratic candidate Kelly Jean McEntee, running for PA State Representative in the 105th district, a speaker at the WOW PA rally and sponsor of Emma’s Revolution, a headline act among multiple entertainers providing music for the rally. Seeing the photo, my friend said:

I saw that woman in the Hummer making rounds and rounds in the area and her reactions appeared strange and suspicious. Now I know why. Yes, please go ahead publish my remarks that I texted you at the rally, but keep my name off for now.

The women’s rights activist had traveled all night from Washington DC to Harrisburg, was so flabbergasted at what he was hearing at the rally that he texted me a passionate series of statements that I summarized at the end of the rally.

In summary, he said:

Anne, please tell the people that I come from a place in the world where women have lost so many rights since the 1970s. The legislature tells them exactly how they must dress and punishes them violently with flogging when they are picked up for lack of modesty. You know that 40,000 women were flogged in 2008, the year before you became involved with Lubna and me.

I am so surprised to arrive in America and see women fighting for their rights to health care and contraception. Even in Saudi Arabia, where women can’t drive cars, their contraception is included in health care.

Anne, the war on women is everywhere from Sudan to Saudi Arabia and now America — the place I thought was the home of the free. It isn’t true if you are a woman, and I can’t believe my eyes at what I am seeing, hearing and reading in your great country.

It was my work with this activist on behalf of the women of Sudan that clarified my vision of the erosion of women’s rights here in America. Religion’s primary role in a determined assault of the rights of privacy and self-determination of all women worldwide became after 2009 a major focus of the AOC website. ~Anne Enke

Flogging of Sudanese Woman

In April of 2010 my friend delivered raw files of this flogging in Khartoum, taken by a bystander with a cell phone.

He came to me because YouTube kept taking down the video, when the right-wing social conservatives complained in mass that it was against religion.

My friend knew that I wouldn’t take it down, under any kind of pressure. It was also my job to contact the “big press” which I did. Bloomberg News has been very favorable to covering these kinds of global horror stories and so I reached out to them.

Within a few hours BBC News and CNN also picked up the story, and only then, did the videos stay up on YouTube.

You can read the entire description of the event sent to me from my friend pictured above in AOC World Women as Laughing Brutality in Woman’s Flogging Video Chills Sudan. 

This video clip depicts the scene of a Sudanese girl receiving blows whip all over her body at a police station in Khartoum this week. A wave of condemnation by the Sudanese on the Internet and newspapers concluded that what happened was exceeding the legal punishment and amounted to physical torture and severe humiliation.

The film shows the police carrying out the punishment of flogging with a whip on the Sudanese girl in front of a crowd of people. The Girl received blows whip all over her body from the legs, back, arms and head wildly and violently. The girl was crying and lying on the ground squirming in pain, begging the policeman to stop hitting her, before another officer assisted him and participated in the beating.