Dozens of Muslim women link inIndia link last Sunday found they had beenput up for sale link onlinelink.
Hana Khan, a commercial pilot whose name was on the list, told the BBC shewas alerted to it when a friend sent her a tweet which took her to “SulliDeals”, an app link and website that hadtaken publicly available pictures of women and created profiles, describingthe women as “deals of the day”.
The app link landing page had a photo of anunknown woman. On the next two pages Ms Khan saw photos of her friends. Onthe page after that she saw herself. “I counted 83 names. There could bemore,” she told BBC. “They’d taken my photo from Twitter and it had my username. This app link was running for 20 daysand we didn’t even know about it. It sent chills down my spine.”
The app link pretended to offer users thechance to buy a “Sulli” – a derogatory slang term used by right-wing Hindutrolls for Muslim women link.There was no real auction of any kind – the purpose of the applink was just to degrade and humiliate.
Ms Khan said she had been targeted because of her religion. “I’m a Muslimwoman who’s seen and heard,” she said. “And they want to silence us.”
GitHub – the web platform that hosted the open-source applink – shut it down quickly followingcomplaints. “We suspended user accounts following the investigation ofreports of such activity, all of which violate our policies,” the companysaid in a statement.
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But the experience has left women scarred. Those who featured on the applink all vocal Muslims, includingjournalists, activists, artists or researchers. A few have since deletedtheir social media accounts and many others said they were afraid offurther harassment.
“No matter how strong you are, but if your picture and other personalinformation is made public, it scares you, it disturbs you,” another womantold BBC.
But several of the women whose details were shared on the applink have taken to social media to call outthe “perverts”, and vowed to fight. A dozen have formed a WhatsApp group toseek – and offer – support and some of them, including Ms Khan, have lodgedcomplaints with the police.
