The police have taken the initiative to investigate messaging app Telegram group chats which are purportedly circulating women’s photos without their consent.
“I received the information last night so I have asked my officers to investigate this issue.
“There were no police reports but we have taken the initiative to carry out an investigation on these accounts,” Bukit Aman Sexual, Women and Child Investigations Division (D11) principal assistant director Siti Kamsiah Hassan told Malaysiakini today.
She added that they would have to work with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to probe the matter
The Telegram groups were first highlighted on social media by Twitter user Nur Syakinah who found out last Sunday that her pictures from Instagram were being shared in one of the groups without her consent.
The group, called "V2K", purportedly had over 30,000 members and was used to share pictures and videos of women without their consent. Some of the content was pornographic in nature.
Nur Syakinah told Malaysiakini that her tweet insulting the group’s actions caught the attention of the group itself after which members of the group began to post “aggressive” messages aimed at her in the group, she said.
“A friend of a friend of a friend who was in the group told us what he saw. He and a few others were added without being told beforehand but stayed on as "lookouts" to see what the group was up to.
“After seeing my tweets, they (those in the group) were very upset and started trash-talking me,” said Nur Syakinah, a 21-year-old student.
She has since made several reports to the MCMC and intends to lodge a police report by the end of this week along with her friend whose pictures were also circulated in the group.
Another Twitter user Joanna Joseph, meanwhile, has had her nude pictures shared on various “porn groups” for many years.
“My sexual harassment issue started long ago before Telegram was invented. My nudes went out 11 years ago and it has been circulated on a lot of social media apps and I’ve been continuously harassed over the years until today.
“’V2K’ isn’t the only porn group. There are so many that exist, like ‘Vitamin for Testicles’ and ‘Selfie Vandi’ and the list goes on. All with more than 10,000 of them inside.
“My pictures on Instagram and also personal ones have been circulated inside the group including my number earlier this year.
“I got harassed by a bunch of men, had about 500 calls, had them video calling with their privates out and so much more. It was traumatising,” Joanna, 23, told Malaysiakini.
She said she had lodged police reports but nothing had ever come out of the investigations.
Joanna, who is a student as well as a model and actress, claimed that this could be because there were police officers who were part of these groups.
When asked about the alleged presence of police officers in the groups, Siti Kamsiah said she would discuss the matter with her officers.
“I take note of this. I will discuss with my officers,” she said.
She also advised the women affected to come forth so that the Sexual Crimes Division could interview them, assuring that the investigation would be directly under her team.
Both Nur Syakinah and Joanna said they were trying to highlight the issue as it was rampant in Malaysia and remained unaddressed.
Joanna said she had made a video about the trauma she went through when she faced online sexual harassment and how she dealt with it.
“Somehow it connected with so many women who reached out to me asking me for help […] it was horrifying (that so many faced such harassment),” she said.
She also tweeted yesterday that her lawyer was planning to do “something big” with regards to the issue. She later told Malaysiakini that they would hold a press conference to further highlight the issue.
In her tweet, she also urged as many women as possible to lodge police reports about such incidents in order to push for action from the authorities.
Nur Syakinah said she first tweeted publicly about the "V2K" group to spread awareness as well as to gain public attention in order to scare such groups.
“As girls of this generation, this isn’t news to us but the scale of these groups and how they operate is something I thought people should know. By gaining public attention, I hoped it would scare the groups and let them know they can’t just do as they please anymore.
“Usually girls are taught to just quietly report these things or even to just handle it without attracting attention supposedly to ‘save face’ for the guy but I don’t believe in that. I shouldn’t have to think so much of their reputation after they did something wrong, right?” she said.
She also encouraged people to share her posts widely in case she was somehow targeted by those in the Telegram groups and forced to delete her postings or her account.
“I keep asking people to spread it so that it will be harder for them to cover it up.
“I heard of other girls who were threatened and deactivated their accounts and I just wanted to make sure that even if they silenced me, they would not be able to silence the truth,” she said. - Mkini
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