Man Harassing Malaysian Women on Twitter Because Women’s March Happened
ICYMI, the International Women’s Day march happened last Sunday in Kuala Lumpur and saw more than 300 participants marching together to demand women’s rights and gender equality. The rally was themed ‘End Violence, Respect Women!’ as Malaysians firmly took their stand on the seven demands of #WomensMarchMY through a variety of creative placards.
While the march went on peacefully, harassment and attacks on social media against those who attended started right after the march was over. Although the organisers reminded fellow participants to ignore and report any hate speech towards the march, one Twitter user known as @PejuangJlnLurus (a.k.a PU Jamal) got many netizens rilled up as he went too far with his tweets to the point others started digging up his details and reporting him to the authorities.
With more than 20,000 followers on Twitter, PU Jamal decided to tweet out a sexual statement on Women’s March participants photos. Take a look:
Right after, many netizens, especially women, came to the participants’ defence and the first thing his chicken brain decided to do was… threaten the women who spoke out by screenshotting photos of them and distributing their photos on the shadiest app ever – Telegram.
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While we don’t exactly know what he wants to do with these pictures, some Twitter users stated that he will probably share them in misogynistic groups for further harassment.
For authorities to take action onto this sexual harasser, mass reporting needs to happen. I have done my reports but I cannot make a difference alone.
Twitter: @PejuangJlnLurus
Ig: pejuangjalanlurus
Name: Hafi Nazhan@PDRMsia @McmcReact @SKMM_MCMC pic.twitter.com/krvXXdPOKS— letsjamjen (@letsjamjen2) March 10, 2020
There’s a Malaysian twitter account with almost 20K followers (dunno if real or fake) targeting Malaysian women here because he’s upset #WomensMarchMY happened.
He’s harassing them by threatening to distribute these women’s photos on telegram.
How low can Malay men go?
— ⨂ Lt M Elona binti Muskri ⨂ (@yours_heidi) March 9, 2020
Sexual Harasser alert. Report him down. He is collecting women’s photos to be spread into misogynistic groups for horny men. He has also been promoting violence against women. pic.twitter.com/V0ElLBP1fs
— letsjamjen (@letsjamjen2) March 10, 2020
Why is this fucker not behind bars yet? https://t.co/WXMKr4KHvM
— Khabir (@KhabirM) March 9, 2020
Upon further stalking, turns out this is not PU Jamal’s first rodeo. He allegedly went viral in 2019 for saying that his future wife needs to quit her job to become his “slave” – spoken like a true misogynist – and there was a point where he even made fun of a failed suicide. How low can you go, mate?
We get it, people love to troll but this is more than just trolling – this is down-right harassment towards women. What sucks more is, there are many men out there who enable and support his problematic behaviour with weird-ass justifications like, “girls shouldn’t post up pictures if they don’t want it to be shared”. How dense can your brain be?
Following up on the online abuse, Women’s Match organisers have urged the authorities to put a stop to online violence against women and marginalised communities. It’s time we held these men accountable for their actions. Social media can never truly be safe, but there’s a reason why the report button is there.
Now more than ever, we need MCMC or PDRM to take these threats seriously, to work towards proper legal frameworks to curb online harassment – without infringing upon the right to free speech.
Al-Jazeera reported that more than one in five women have experienced online harassment or abuse. Almost half out of 4,000 surveyed-victims said the abuse or harassment was sexist or misogynistic in nature, and a quarter had received physical or sexual threats. Besides sexist, racist or homophobic abuse, 17% of victims said they had identifying personal details or private photos shared online.
“This is not something that goes away when you log off. Imagine getting death threats or rape threats when you open an app or living in fear of sexual and private photos being shared online without your consent,” said Azmina Dhrodia, Amnesty’s researcher on technology and human rights.
While we’re at it, perhaps the government too can take the seven demands of Women’s March Malaysia fo’ real this time.
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