Page 34 - Islands Business May 2023

ICT ICT

NOT SO INNOCENT BYSTANDERS

By Sera Tikotikovatu-Sefeti Singh’s frightening experiences with harassment have not
been confined to online environments.
Policymakers in the Pacific Islands have been urged to “This was a scary one…a man stalked and harassed me both
consider adopting laws requiring bystanders to report online physically and online; he knew all my movements, where I
violence against women and girls. lived, family details, places I frequented, and the time I went
The suggestion comes from an ‘online bystander’ report by to work.
the Commonwealth Secretariat recently released at a confer- “And when I was away, he managed to get access to my
ence in Port Moresby that focused on building an effective mobile phone number and kept tabs on me online through
anti-cybercrime framework in the Pacific region. ‘mutual friends’ and organisation/network pages I was a part
The report, Addressing Online Violence Against Women and of,” she said.
Girls in the Commonwealth Pacific Region – The Role of By- Her ordeal included the individual stalking her after a
standers, found existing online safety laws in the region tend conference.
to focus more on the perpetrators and ignore the damaging “This was a very scary experience, especially when it was
role that bystanders can play. carried out online and then out in the real physical world,”
It states: “The fundamental issue is that the harm caused she said.
by the act of online violence is exacerbated by the reactions Singh says the problems are exacerbated when they are
and actions of members of the online community.” not taken seriously or the complaint is not taken seriously by
It is an issue that is all too familiar for many people in our police.
region, where reports of cyberbullying, child pornography, “The questions I got when I reported them were, ‘What
breaches of privacy, cyber harassment, blackmail, and more were you wearing?’, ‘What did you do to get his attention?’,
have infiltrated the web. ‘How did they access your information?’- somewhat implying
The Commonwealth Secretariat report states that physical that the fault was mine,” she said.
violence against women and girls “is related to violence per- In the Solomon Islands, Transparency International Execu-
petrated in the online space, since both rely on ill-conceived tive Director, Ruth Liloqula says they have seen instances of
perceptions of women and girls as justification for the violent online violence directed at children from her district.
behaviour.” Liloqula said, “We do get individuals who face online vio-
According to experts, “Cyberspace might also provide of- lence, and we refer them to the Family Support Centre, and
fenders with a safe environment from which to launch their they have a number of lawyers that work on it.”
violent behaviour.” Liloqula says there is little discussion about online violence
in the community, despite the fact that many have experi-
‘A disease in the country’ enced some sort of cyber violence.
In Fiji, the Minister of Trade, Cooperatives, Small and Me- The Solomon Islands Telecommunications Act 2009 protects
dium Enterprises, and Communications, Manoa Kamikamica, against obtaining data, intercepting messages, and altering,
stated during a recent Safer Internet Day event that “approxi- destroying, or deleting data, but contains no clear law against
mately 2800 complaints have been lodged with the Online online violence.
Safety Commission (OSC).” This often leads to citizens taking matters into their own
He said the highest percentage of these reports were hands. Liloqula shares an experience involving minors from
defamatory comments or posts, mostly on Facebook (27.16%), her province: “I remember there was one guy that was taking
and that 43.26% involved harassment, hacking of social media photos of beautiful girls who were underage in my province,
accounts, online scams, or posts relating to family matters so we knew who this guy was, and we all hunted him down
and business-related matters. These reports came from young and warned him, and so he had to take down the images.”
people between the ages of 19 and 25. Meanwhile in PNG, a cybercrime survey under the Papua
Veena Singh moderates a popular page on Facebook, Barter New Guinea cybercrime policy states that 54.14% of respon-
for Better Fiji, and has personal experience of such harass- dents have experienced some incidence of cybercrime.
ment. Lydia Leesa Dimokari, who works with survivors of violence,
“An example of attacks and harassment we [admins and says domestic violence or intimate partner violence is the
moderators] received were more sexual, sexist, and homopho- most pressing issue in every community she visits.
bic in nature; the person(s) was very specific implying that we “Members of the communities see violence happening in the
needed to be ‘raped’,” she recalls. street, where the husband is beating his wife. Some people
“I suppose he didn’t like the fact that we were very opin- say that it’s a family issue and we shouldn’t intervene, so they
ionated and empowered. We had simply removed a post of his let this poor woman get bashed up in public.
because he did not comply with the page guidelines.” “So it’s really like a disease in the country,” Dimokari said,

34 Islands Business, May 2023