ISLAMABAD – Online abuse and hate speech concentrated on politically active women in Afghanistan has considerably higher since the Taliban took over the rustic in Aug. 2021, in keeping with a document launched Monday via a U.Okay.-based rights group.
Afghan Witness, an open-source venture run via the non-profit Center for Information Resilience, says it discovered that abusive posts tripled, a 217% building up, between June-December 2021 and the similar length of 2022.
Building on experience won from an identical analysis in Myanmar, the Afghan Witness group analyzed publicly to be had information from X, previously referred to as Twitter, and carried out in-depth interviews with six Afghan women to analyze the character of the net abuse for the reason that Taliban takeover.
The document mentioned the group of investigators “collected and analyzed over 78,000 posts” written in Dari and Pashto — two native Afghan languages — directed at “almost 100 accounts of politically active Afghan women.”
The interviews indicated that the unfold of abusive posts on-line helped make the women goals, the document’s authors mentioned. The interviewees reported receiving messages with pornographic subject material in addition to threats of sexual violence and demise.
“I think the hatred they show on social media does not differ from what they feel in real life,” one girl instructed Afghan Witness.
Taliban govt spokesmen weren’t instantly to be had to remark in regards to the document.
The document recognized 4 basic topics within the abusive posts: accusations of promiscuity; the conclusion that politically active women violated cultural and non secular norms; allegations the women had been brokers of the West; and accusations of making false claims as a way to seek asylum abroad.
At the similar time, Afghan Witness mentioned it discovered the net abuse used to be “overwhelmingly sexualized,” with over 60% of the posts in 2022 containing phrases corresponding to “whore” or “prostitute.”
“Since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, social media has turned from being a place for social and political expression to a forum for abuse and suppression, especially of women,” the venture’s lead investigator, Francesca Gentile, mentioned.
The Taliban have barred women from maximum spaces of public existence and paintings and stopped girls from going to school past the 6th grade as phase of harsh measures they imposed after taking energy in 2021, as U.S. and NATO forces were pulling out of Afghanistan following 20 years of conflict.
“The Taliban’s hostility towards women and their rights sends a message to online abusers that any woman who stands up for herself is fair game,” added Gentile.
One feminine journalist, talking with Afghan Witness on situation of anonymity, mentioned she deactivated some of her social media accounts and now not reads feedback, which impacts her paintings when attempting to achieve out to on-line resources.
The document mentioned it discovered the overwhelming majority of the ones at the back of the net abuse had been males, “from a range of political affiliations, ethnic groups, and backgrounds.”