KOCHI: With her wedding just a couple of months away, Serena (name changed) should be on cloud nine. But she isn’t. Instead, she is dealing with two unfortunate experiences. The first was coming across her name and phone number, along with pictures she posted on Facebook, on few porn sites. Distressed, the bride-to-be contacted her brother and the duo approached the cyber police for help.
The police agreed to help her. But multiple follow-ups were met with the reply “we have written to Facebook”. Frustrated, Serena contacted technology consultant Labby George. “I wrote many essays to Facebook and got a couple of them removed. Yesterday she sent me a couple more links. The Kerala police, as far as I know, haven’t done anything in particular to curb the cyber assault,” said Labby.
One of a million
She added that Serena’s was one of a thousand complaints that go unnoticed. However, with Serena’s case, they went the extra mile with moral policing. They used the victim’s blurred picture to create an awareness poster about people misusing pictures of women in social media! “It is like women have gotten used to not getting help. But how can they not consider the situation of the victim, and use her picture to put out a message warning women against posting their pictures? What kind of sick mockery is this?” asks Labby.
Another woman, Nimisha, an IT professional in Kochi, said she and her colleague were turned away by the cops with long lectures on how ineffective Facebook’s feedback mechanism is. “I felt like their intention was to turn us away and dissuade us from filing any complaints,” she said. Labby says that the police are using social media to effectively communicate their policies, but when it comes to dealing with gender issues, it looks like they need additional training on all fronts.
‘WE DIDN’T MEAN THAT’
Officers in the social media wing of the cyber police said they did not think much about the patriarchal concept in that message and were riding on good intentions.
“When the girl came with her brother to get her photographs removed, we asked them to file a complaint to initiate an investigation. However, her brother said that they did not want publicity and only want to get the pictures removed. That is when we thought of creating awareness about the issue among the public, without revealing the identity of the victim,” said one of the officers.
They said the oppressive language in their message was unintentional and officers assured TNIE that they will be careful in the future.