CAIRO — The father of Shorouk Ashraf was horrified when he checked his phone one morning.
“I will slaughter your daughter if she marries anyone else,” read a message that had come through on his Facebook.
Shorouk Ashraf is the sister of Naira Ashraf, the university student who was slaughtered a year ago in front of Mansoura University in Egypt’s Nile Delta. The murderer was a young man whom she had refused to marry.
The fate of her sister continues to haunt Shorouk in more ways than one. She said she frequently received messages from a man with whom she has had no prior contact. She blocked him, but he then sent her father that threatening message.
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The message prompted her to file a complaint at a local police station. The sender was later arrested. But her concerns remain. She is still haunted by the image of her bloodied sister lying dead on the ground.
She fears that she will be the next victim, not because she committed a crime, but because, like her sister, she refused someone’s offer of marriage.
Prosecutors’ investigations have verified that Shorouk encountered instances of blackmail, online death threats and other forms of cyberviolence, as reported by various media outlets. The findings reveal that the suspect has directed messages of the same nature to multiple girls.
According to Amnesty International, cyberviolence “takes multiple forms, including direct or indirect threats to use physical or sexual violence and abuse that target one or more aspects of a woman’s identity.” The rights group also explained that the largest number of victims of this crime are women.
Blackmail with photos
Shorouk is not the only woman to have experienced these issues. Similar incidents have occurred and will continue to occur unless something is done.
Marwa Hamdi who was in a relationship with a young man. The relationship ended, but the man didn’t stop pursuing and threatening her. She said the man blackmailed her with her photos and their chat history.
“I was confident in him … I used to talk to him freely on chat for hours, I sent him pictures,” she said. She added that they were supposed to get marry soon, but that disagreements between led to them breaking up.
“He threatened to send the photos to my family and demanded money,” she said. “I blocked him, but he created new accounts (on social media) and kept blackmailing me. I was scared that my family would kill me if he sent them the photos.”
Cyberviolence and sexual harassment
Hamdi didn’t file a complaint with the police. She was concerned that her family would find out about her relationship with the man.
“I wouldn’t ever be free from the scandal and the social stigma,” she said.
Hamdi – like many other girls and women who are sexually blackmailed and are victims of cyberviolence – resorted to the only alternative option: paying the man the money he requested.
According to a 2021 report by United Nations Women’s Regional Office, 49% of women who use the internet in the Arab region said they didn’t feel safe due to online sexual harassment.
The report showed that 36% of the surveyed women said they were advised to ignore harassment incidents, while 23% said they were blamed for the incident. 21% said they were told to delete their social media accounts, according to the report.
Laws aren’t enough
Although several feminist organizations and initiatives have begun talking extensively about violence against women, and encouraged women to report incidents of violence, laws alone are not enough.
Women need to be protected when filing their complaints. Their privacy, most importantly of all, must be protected. This would encourage women to report these types of crimes, said Mahmoud Al-Yamani, founder of the “Resist” initiative, one of the initiatives handling online blackmail of women in Egypt.
But death threats are not just limited to outsiders. Rehab Taha, 38, was threatened by her ex-husband.
“After the divorce, he kept pursuing me and sending me messages saying he wanted us to remarry,” she said, adding that she refused his requests. “I just wanted a good relationship for my daughter,” she said.
He then began to threaten her.
“I blocked him,” she said, “but he used another account and threatened to spray boiling water on my face.”
Unlike Marwa Hamdi, Taha resorted to going to the police and filed a complaint against her ex-husband. But she said she was stunned by the officer’s response. The officer tried to dissuade her, offering to settle the matter in a friendly way, “for the sake of their daughter”.
Taha said that societal norms encourage men to commit more blackmail and cyber violence against women, which explains the officer’s response and his siding with the ex-husband.
Eventually, Taha was forced to change her address and job to escape her ex-husband’s threats.
This type of bias may lead to murder, as perpetrators are likely to continue blackmailing the victim and eventually kill her. The victim may even resort to ending her own life.
Basant Khaled was an example. The girl took her own life after she was blackmailed and threatened with fake explicit photos on social media.
Lamia Lutfi, director of the New Women’s Foundation, said societal awareness and community support is needed to tackle the problem.
“Laws alone are not enough,” she said.
