Sulli Deals: Muslim Women in India are offered to sell “at auction” by Women’s News
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New Delhi, India – On the night of July 4, Afreen Fatima participated in an online forum on the persecution of Muslims in India. As soon as the session was over the cell phone was flooded with messages informing the 23-year-old entrepreneurial student that they had been “put up for sale” at a fake online auction.
And he was not alone. Unbeknownst to them, photos of more than 80 other Muslim women, including students, activists and journalists, have been uploaded to the “Sulli Accords” app.
The founders of the platform offered visitors the opportunity to proclaim “Sulli” – a derogatory term used by right-wing Hindu trolls for Muslim women – by calling them “day deals”.
“That night, I didn’t reply to people who sent me a message. I just signed up for Twitter. I had no strength to respond, ”Fatima told Al Jazeera from his home in Allahabad in northern Uthab Pradesh.
I don’t think I would ever be silent about that.
He said the incident took place one day when a far-right Hindu man asked for the abduction of Muslim women at a rally in Pataudin, about 60 kilometers from New Delhi. “I was upset; I couldn’t sleep, ”he said.
Thousands of miles away in New York City, 25-year-old Hiba Beg had just returned from enjoying the city’s Independence Day celebrations. He then found out that his profile had been put out for a virtual auction in the “Sulli deals”.
The physical distance from the Indian home was also not enough to protect her from immediate “feelings of dehumanization and failure,” said Beg, a political student at Columbia University.
The app hosted by GitHub was dismissed after people’s anger and complaints. “We suspended user accounts after investigating reports of this activity, all of which violate our policies,” a GitHube spokesman told Al Jazeera by email.
“GitHub has a long-standing policy against content and behavior that encourages harassment, discrimination and violence.”
A police complaint was filed
On July 8, Delhi Police filed a police complaint (first information report) after the Delhi Women’s Commission (DCW) and the National Women’s Commission requested an investigation into the matter, especially in the days when Muslim women were outraged.
The Chinmay Biswal PRO of the Delhi Police said the investigation has been launched. “The notes have been sent to GitHube to share the relevant details,” Biswal told Al Jazeera.
One week after the app was found, no arrests were made.
Renowned journalist and activist Rana Ayyub, who has received malicious sexualization trolling for her clear opinions, has said that this has been done “systematically” and is being done against Muslim women’s voices.
“Their way [Hindu far-right groups] sexualizing you is the only way they think they can embarrass and silence Muslim women online. We seem to be ‘oppressed’ in their books – so they think, ‘How dare we talk about ourselves?’ “Ayyube, a Washington Post columnist, told Al Jazeera.
Sania Ahmad, a media professional who also appeared on her profile in the Sulli Deals app, says that this type of violence online is hardly surprising. The 34-year-old, a Muslim voice on Twitter with nearly 34,000 followers, says the platform has been used to make sexualized and graphic threats online.
“It’s a very sad thing, but I’m used to it. Last year, a survey was conducted and a Hindutva account asked “Which of the Saints should I choose for my harem?” We continued to report on the poll, but it lasted 24 hours, ”Ahmad said, referring to members of the far-right Hindu.
“Eventually the results were published and the comments below called for even more violence. The following comments were – ‘why we should add them to the harem, remove and throw them away’. Another said, ‘I want to cut off my heads and use them to decorate my wall.’ .
“Traumatizer”
Ahmad’s images turned into pornographic audiovisuals after speaking out against a similar case of a virtual auction of Muslim women the night before Eid this year. A YouTube channel run by Liberal Doge Live, a man named Ritesh Jha, ran an “Eid Special” – a “live auction” of Muslim women in India and Pakistan.
It’s so traumatic, Ahmad says, that he had to back down from Twitter for a few days and had serious anxiety attacks.
“When I trolled, my gender is never separated from my religious identity. I am not being trolled as a woman, especially as a Muslim woman who votes on Hindutva issues on political issues, ”she said.
Pilot Hana Mohsin Khan, a home airline, has filed a police complaint [Courtesy: Hana Mohsin Khan]
Ahmad sent a legal notice to Twitter last week with instructions on the platform to verify this level of hate speech and abuse. “I have also complained to the police in the past,” he said. “None of those complaints saw the light of day.”
Hasiba Amin, the social media coordinator of the opposition Congress party, one of the women featured in the Eid virtual auction, is disillusioned with a similar legal process in these cases after filing a FIR against the perpetrators.
“A few months later, I didn’t see much progress in the research,” he says. “I think if the police had taken enough action, those people wouldn’t have had the courage to do something like that. But it’s that inactivity that gives them impunity.”
Anas Tanwir, a lawyer based in the capital of New Delhi, believes that online platforms that host apps like “Sulli Deals” should have a greater responsibility for hate speech and abuse.
“Any platform or website – open source or otherwise – has an ethical and legal responsibility not to allow such activities. That is basically to encourage and encourage illegal trafficking in women. This is precisely the case in the virtual world,” she told Al Jazeera.
‘We will not be silent’
Activists fear that Indian online space is becoming increasingly toxic to women in general, and Muslim women in particular.
Last January, Amnesty International India said in a report that nearly 100 Indian women politicians on Twitter had been subjected to unprecedented online abuse. According to the report, not only the views expressed by the women on the network were also focused on elements of identities such as gender, religion, caste and marital status.
“Thus, Muslim women politicians were more than Hindu members against them,” says Delhi lawyer Vrinda Bhandari, who specializes in privacy and digital rights.
“It is important to fix these offenses according to hate speech, because we need to recognize the communal angle of the offense, the derogatory use of‘ Sulli ’and how it is used to target Muslim women,” Bhandari said.
In these contexts the persecution of Muslim women takes on a more graphic and sexualized connotation both online and offline.
“In general, in addition to objectifying and victimizing majority views, it is also opportunistic,” said Ghazala Jamil Jawaharlal, an assistant professor at the Center for the Study of Law and Governance at Nehru University. “Even in Islamophobic world narratives, the intention to save Muslim women is never a pure or real intention. It’s almost always a blank slate for some anti-Muslim projects. “
Rebel. This is a cybercrime @DelhiPolice should investigate and misuse social media to threaten women (which is on the agenda of Parliament’s IT committee). It will continue to move forward. https://t.co/zd9uGMQZdn
– Shashi Tharoor (hasShashiTharoor) July 7, 2021
“Especially in India, this trend has been combined with widespread impunity, especially in the face of apparent violence against Muslims, women and Dalits. In my reading, this virtual “auction” is an increase in trolling. On the one hand, it is reminiscent of the slave trade [a] public place on the other hand, ”Jamil said, speaking of Muslim women: the author of the book of dreams and cords, Al Jazeera.
Fatima, an entrepreneurial student, is also concerned about the more direct consequences of this attack.
“What happens if someone claims day treatment? I don’t see anything preventing that from happening.
At the same time, I don’t think I would ever be silent about it. We will continue to occupy all existing public spaces, be it Twitter, Instagram, Facebook – online, offline, anywhere. ”
Hana Mohsin Khan, who also starred in the film “Sulli Deals,” created a WhatsApp group called “Solidarity,” which brings together more than 20 targeted women.
Khan, a pilot with a home airline, has filed a police complaint. She says the support of all these women will continue.
“We all help each other,” he told Al Jazeera. “We’re all working together; we hardly sleep. We will not remain silent and we will not allow this to happen. “
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