Nearly 75% of women journalists who were part of a global survey that included India said they had been targetted by online violence attacks, and 20% said they had experienced physical attacks as a consequence, said a UNESCO-funded report published by the New York-based International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ).
The latest ICFJ report said that more than 62% of the abusive tweets Ms. Ayyub received were personal attacks and many included “rape and death threats, Islamophobic abuse, and character assassination”. It also claimed that “the online violence against [Rana] Ayyub is largely instigated and fuelled by Twitter users aligned with Hindu nationalism and India’s ruling BJP party” and were part of “Ayyub’s offline legal harassment by the Indian authorities” in response to her journalistic work. Ms. Ayyub, whose columns appear in the Washington Post, faces a number of legal charges in India, including under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) pertaining to her charity work and donations collected during the pandemic and lockdown in India in 2020. The report was brought out in partnership with a U.K.-based team at the University of Sheffield’s Computer Science department.
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