Cyber violence become a new terror for women in Bangladesh

Since the enlargement of communication through the internet and development of cyberspace is a pragmatic side of our country but apart from this augmentation and initiation online communication is increasing cyber violence day by day. Women are the foremost target in the field of cyberspace. Cybercrime and cyber security are interconnected and barely separate and cyber security is one of the key challenges, addressed by the 2010 UN General Assembly resolution on cyber security.
In Bangladesh women often have to face many substandard and aggressive comments, picture morphing, vulgar massages by anonymous social sites and accounts, women against these cybercrimes are more often affected by them mentally rather than physically. Offline violence is grasped as drastic and online violence is considered not so much vicious. An appropriate justification is a moral right that customarily fails to look after the predicate of the matter on the Internet, relative to a user’s right in the cyberspace to compare any cyber harassment with respect to another user right, establishing his or her online identity without any involvement. General Chat Chat Lounge (Sama & Shoaf, 2002). The laws should focus on women’s mental health more than physical. Most of the time it is found by someone they have known before or acquaintance.

In 2019 more than 2.2 billion of fake accounts were removed by Facebook in the first three months yet. In our country, 70% of the victims of cybercrime are women according to the Cyber Security and Crime Division of DMP, apart from this after 666 cases related to the analysis of the cybercrime unit gave the findings they received complaints about this since 2016. Parallel to a non-governmental organization, the Cyber Crime Awareness Foundation (CCF) has found that females are more in the endangered comparisons to males. According to the survey of CCF 30% of the sufferers did not have any idea how to take legal action against the perpetrators, as well as 25% of people, do not feel any necessity to take any action against those crimes while 23% keep that matter. Secret because of the fear of harassment. After observing the technological misuse of the current scenario in collaboration with our country’s Bangladesh Insight Foundation, the Division of Communication Technology of the Government of the Peoples Republic of Bangladesh has started an initiative to create awareness among people and undertake a project called (Cyber Nirapotta). Many seminars, campaigns in 64 districts over cyber law, cyber safety and safe use of technology. According to the data of cyber tribunal, (Bangladesh), Dhaka, 925 cases have been received by the tribunal in 2018 along with 130 cases were filed in the first two months of the current year. Than in 2013 cases of cyber crime were only 3, than in 2014 it increased to 33, 152 in 2015, 233 in 2016, and 568 in 2017. As per the survey of Article 19, 73% of women in our country have faced online violence. About less than 25% of women have internet access to internet report at present time smart phones, android phones have become so handy and it seems to be everyone’s hand, where people in Bangladesh treated women as peripheral so it becomes very elemental to harm them via online. It has been observed by many studies and surveys that every year due to cyber violence 11 suicide attempts oversee in women in our country. In numerous ways women are facing harassment obscene massages, chats, aggressive, vulgar comments especially in the case of known female celebrities, rejection in morphing a girl picture to mortifying her in social media among her known and unknown persons becoming very common, creating fake Accounts using a girl picture, revenge porn.
The present currency of sexual harassment in the era of cyberspace and also shows the inter-relation between social harassment and anonymous harassment in cyberspace. This anonymous social use pave the way for cybercrime against women and try to harm their social status and reputation and become the reason of the suicide and most of the time it is found to be done by someone they know and it, such online attacks, personal comments, online violence must not be physical at first instance but it will be an atrocity and damage, anyone, mentally. Study, data and information take place in their research that because of the easy access and lack of ethics, revenge intentions hence the reason for patronizing women are mostly targeted in cyberspace.
Most of the victims of cybercrime claimed and the investigation shows that it was done by someone they have known from before. Most of the women are being in fear of humiliation and unable to take steps to file the case against the perpetrators the reason they cannot retaliate against the harassment and social humiliation in person. They have surrounded since there is a practice of an imbalance of gender power and an ancient traditional socio-cultural practice of patriarchy, these behaviors influence how women should treat both in offline and online. ( Nova el al.2019) . cyber violence against women especially women celebrities, activists and journalist are mostly targeted and it also creates obstacles in the way of exercising freedom of expression and speech. In their study, it is reflected that the nature of sexism and practice of patronizing in society is one of the reasons behind this harassment. Women are more affected bypassing any comments like body shaming, or objectifying in comparison to men . some of there literature examines the communication differences between men and women ( Ruth lewis el al.2016 ) In their report, it has appeared that 73% of the women have already faced and experienced violence in online ( UN Broadband commission for digital development, September 2015 ). As per their report and information received from RTI between 2013 -2016 there were 520 cases in the cyber tribunal and the number of victims of females is 90 and 320 cases are disposed out of 520.
In report their objective is to elucidate what is hate speech and online molestation because there is the incident in which women are actually harassed without knowing, lack of knowledge, they have no idea how should they raise their voice against those perpetrators, so digital literacy is important in that case. They also linked up and reflect the connection between the freedom of speech and the right to privacy because of misusing these rights they have conducted to spread online violence. In case of exercising freedom of expression there is slight discrimination noticed against females, whenever it seems a female journalist is growing in her career, she has started to received so many hatred speeches, mails online threats and harassed in online by many ways, then she stopped writing, as per the language of human rights it is called chilling effect, to make any women stop talking about crucial issues related to the public interest. There are many international laws non -binding treaties which give protection to a female journalist but it is the state which has to ensure the proper protection towards the victims and ensure proper police investigation and make sure they have adequate knowledge to deal with these cases. (Blast,2016)
The Internet is very important and becomes part and parcel of our life. We cannot go a single day with the internet. But we human-made it and misusing to harm others especially women. It is not about men and women, it is a human issue. There are two priorities one to eliminate cyber misuse and secondly, online violence against women .To hold more discussion and seminars on online violence and speak out about online harassment to make people know what to do and should not keep silence about, spreading awareness among everyone is very important to reduce online violence.

Footnotes:

1. UNGA Resolution: Creation of a global culture of cybersecurity and taking stock of national efforts to protect critical information infrastructure, A/RES/64/211
2. New York (CNN Business) , https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/23/tech/facebook-transparency-report/index.html
3. Dhaka tribune , the rise of cyber crime worries women , https://www.dhakatribune.com/cybersecurity/2019/04/01/rise-in-cybercrime-worries-women
4. Cyber Crime Awareness Foundation (CCF) , https://ccabd.org/
5. Awareness against Cybercrime & capacity building , https://insightbangladesh.org.bd/projects/awareness-against-cybercrime-capacity-building/
6. Dhaka tribune , over 900 cases related to cyber crimes filed in 2018 , https://www.dhakatribune.com/cybersecurity/2019/04/21/
7. Dhaka tribune , 3% conviction rate of cybercrime in Bangladesh , https://www.dhakatribune.com/cybersecurity/2019/04/20/
8. Article 19 , Technology Mediated Violence Against Women in Bangladesh , https://itforchange.net/e-vaw/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Tahmina-TMVAW-PPT-Mumbai.pdf
9. Intel 2013 annual report , https://s21.q4cdn.com/600692695/files/doc_financials/2013/annual/Intel_AR13.pdf
10. Farhana Akter , Cyber violence against women : The case of Bangladesh , https://www.genderit.org/articles/cyber-violence-against-women-case-bangladesh
11. Faiyka farhat nova , el al.2019 , Online Sexual Harassment over Anonymous Social Media in Bangladesh , https://fayikanova.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/1/8/121808308/ictdfinaldoi.pdf
12. Ruth Lewis*, Michael Rowe and Clare Wiper , ONLINE ABUSE OF FEMINISTS AS AN EMERGING FORM OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS . https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/57/6/1462/2623986/
13. Bangladesh Legal Aid & Services Trust , Responding to Violence against Women and Girls in the Cyber Age , https://blast.org.bd/content/report/Report-of-Expert-Consultation.pdf
14. Cyber violence against women & Girls , https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/genderreport2015final.pdf