Paris prosecutors are investigating online threats against female Afghan taekwondo fighter Marzieh Hamidi, who fled to France in 2021 after the Taliban seized power in Kabul.
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Marzieh Hamidi had suffered “cyber-harassment including death, rape and other threats via social media,” the prosecutors said on Monday.
They added that a specialist online hate unit was investigating the case of the Afghan taekwondo fighter.
“I want the terrorists threatening me with death to be identified and tried in court, so that I can live freely without fear and in full safety,” Hamidi said in a statement sent to France’s AFP news agency.
The martial artist “has been placed under police protection for an indefinite period,” her lawyer Ines Davau said, hoping the perpetuators of the threats would be “swiftly identified”.
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‘Let us exist’
Hamadi did not manage to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics in her under-57 kilogrammes category, but she has been in the media spotlight in France for “speaking out publicly about women’s rights and the Taliban regime,” according to the complaint she filed on 3 September.
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The document states that the current wave of threats followed her denunciation on social media of an August Taliban law barring women’s voices from being heard in public.
Hamidi reiterated her opposition to the law in a press interview and launched the social media hashtag #letusexist.
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From 1 September, “a vast wave of hatred smashed down on her Afghan Whatsapp phone number was shared and she received hundreds of calls and thousands of messages in the space of just a few hours,” the complaint read.
Hamidi’s complaint specifies the offences of sharing private information, malicious phone calls, death or rape threats, online harassment and online sexual harassment.
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Last week, she told RFI she had been flooded with threatening messages since posting a video on social media at the end of August denouncing “gender apartheid” in her homeland.
She is now under police protection, but feels like she lost her freedom and safety. “I don’t feel safe any more in Paris,” she said.
(with AFP)
