Mingsel Foundation draws attention of the government to some Facebook groups which are created to solely share pictures and pass obscene comments about women without their knowledge and consent. It wants the page be taken down immediately
By Mingsel Foundation
It has come to our knowledge that a page named ‘Kanglei emagi… (the rest of the name of the page mentioned derogatory word for women and female genitals in Manipuri)’ has surfaced on Facebook. This page has been uploading pictures of numerous women without their knowledge, let alone their consent.
This private group has around 20,000 members. Unfortunately, the number has been growing rapidly. We’ve already addressed a similar page before and it was closed down.
This page is of the similar nature, they’ve been sharing photos and videos of numbers of women, discussing and commenting obnoxiously. While social media is supposed to be a platform where people reach out to one another, share one’s ideas and thoughts to empower each other by giving us a platform for global participation, it is extremely unfortunate that it is rather being used to degrade women by objectifying her.
Hence, many innocent women are now a victim of such crime with many of them constantly being threatened. In a society like ours that suffers from cultural lag with technological advancement growing rapidly but a lag in cultural advancement or evolution to match it, technologies are being abused. And thus, this is how rapists are harnessed and nourished, rape culture are preserved, women being degraded to a mere sex object, a commodity with slut shaming being normalised now.
We strongly condemn the page and their actions. In a petition started by us to arrest the page admin, which goes by the name “Yumnam Piba” and its associates, we are able to get a good response from the public with 8,833 people signing it. FIR had been filed by other individuals against this person for sharing photos of women without their permission in a very misleading way which amounts to character assassination of the people.
While we take this as a very good step, we would also want to bring to the notice of our government that such notorious behavior be dealt with promptly by the government rather than leaving it to the victims and perpetrators to deal with it on their own. While we are able to bring this to the public, we do not know how many pages of such kinds still exist and are circulating in social media. We request our government to step up and look after such matters before it’s too late and help curb crime against women and children.
Jelina Ashem,
President,
Mingsel Foundation