Pakistani MP who says Imran Khan harassed her faces wave of abuse
When the Pakistani
politician Ayesha Gulalai Wazir accused the
cricket-star-turned-opposition-leader Imran Khan of
sexual harassment, the vitriol unleashed against her was swift and vicious.
First, leaders of
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e
Insaf (PTI) party – which Gulalai also belongs to – publicly denounced her and
demanded 30 million rupees (£218,000) in compensation for damage to his
reputation and “mental torture”. Then came the trolls. On social media, some
said Gulalai, 31, should have acid thrown in her face, others that she should
be whipped. She was called a liar and a carpetbagger. Mocking TV hosts
asked, smirking, if she actually wanted to marry the man she accused. Gulalai says the
political backlash is evidence of the abuse reserved for Pakistani women who
venture to speak out publicly against harassment – abuse that increasingly
takes place online.
“They [the party] have sent a message to women of Pakistan, that if you speak out against misuse of authority, you will face this kind of attitude,” Gulalai told the Guardian. “And this is from PTI who [say they] stand for change in Pakistan .. because of this culture, women will keep mum.” Gulalai says Khan began sending her “inappropriate” text messages in 2013, including sexual intimations and propositions to see him alone, and that he persisted after she rebuked him. She has declined to publish the messages, saying sharing them with the media would fuel further abuse. “His abusive brigade is always with him on social media,” Gulalai said of Khan and his supporters. Instead, she said she would present them to a parliamentary investigation and has called for a forensic audit of her and Khan’s phones. The Women’s Action Forum condemned the reactions to Gulalai’s allegations as “character assassination.” In a country where hundreds of women each year are murdered in so-called honour killings, public debasement of women carries real danger... read more:
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