Cairo: She has a unique distinction to her name. However, Egypt’s first female ship captain Marwa Elselehdar was at the centre of a smear campaign. A fake news blamed Marwa Elselehdar for bringing one of the world’s most strategic shipping routes, the Suez Canal, to a halt. However, when reports of the container ship Ever Given being wedged across the Suez Canal emerged the 29-year-old Elselehdar was on duty hundreds of miles away. She was in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria.E
“I was shocked,” Elselehdar was quoted as saying by the BBC. “I felt that I might be targeted maybe because I’m a successful female in this field or because I’m Egyptian, but I’m not sure,” she added.
Elselehdar is one of the two per cent of the world’s women seafarers. “People in our society still don’t accept the idea of girls working in the sea away from their families for a long time. But when you do what you love, it is not necessary for you to seek the approval of everyone,” she asserted Elselehdar.
Also read: Ever Given’ finally freed, Suez Canal opens up for traffic once again
Screenshots of a fake news headline and a doctored image picked from a news story released March 22, which profiles Elselehdar were circulated on a number of social media platforms. It paved the way to the rumours that she was involved in the Suez incident.
“This fake article was in English so it spread in other countries. I tried so hard to negate what was in the article because it was affecting my reputation,” asserted Elselehdar.
Traffic congestion that affected trade across the world was caused as a result of the skyscraper-sized container ship being stuck in the Suez Canal. More than 300 ships were waiting to pass the Suez Canal, many with animals as cargo, as rescue efforts were on for almost a week. The ship was freed March 29 and the world’s commerce resumed its course after the traffic cleared to a large extent April 3.