According to associate law professor Quazi MH Supan,” Definition of most crimes committed in worldwide real space is gender neutral although a significant number of crimes are committed mostly against women. The scenario remains the same regarding the crimes committed in cyber space. There are no distinct crimes known as cyber crimes against women and consequently there is no compact definition of cyber crime against women”.
Crime against Women
Now a day women are attacked by cyber crimes. Some cyber crimes attack our women. They are now victims with the developing world in various ways. Today in every country’s women are attacked and hence the criminals earn or destroy their goodwill living in the society. There are some crimes which are happening against women in Bangladesh and throughput the world. Crimes are such as Morphine crime, publication secret video of women demanding money, sexual harassment, destroying her character by false identification etc. happen with women.
Girls and women are largely affected by this crime. Their soft feeling is used to have this crime. According to Quazi MH Supan law teacher at Dhaka University states in the daily star, “there are certain cyber crimes that are more likely to target women than their male counterparts. These include Cyberstalking, cyber harassment, morphing and obscene publication, email/profile hacking, spoofing, cyber pornography including revenge porn, internet voyeurism, cyber defamation, cyber bullying, e-mail harassment, cyber blackmailing, threatening, emotional cheating by impersonation, intimate partner violence through internet and abatement of such offences.”
So it can be easily said that all crimes that happen in the cyberspace do not go against only male or female. There are some crimes which go only against women such as fake video or morphine crimes go against women. The scenarios are same in most of the countries.
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Cases and instances of cyber violence against women and others in Bangladesh
According to Quazi MH Supan, associate professor, law department, Dhaka University states, “Cyber pornography refers to portrayal of sexual material on the web.
Criminals often rape or molest a girl, capture the incident by webcam or mobile phone and spread the video over internet. These incidents are becoming alarmingly common even in the rural areas of Bangladesh”9
15th April, 2015 a group of miscreants try to abuse and misbehave with the girls in the going crowd path in front of TSC, Dhaka University. After the incident, all photos goes available to all living people in Bangladesh. Then all socialist girls try to protest this. For this they are threatened by the miscreants by text messages or emails.
A university going girl fall in love with a boy…Their relations continued from 2009 to 2013. In 2013 their relationship break down…During relation the boy took some intimacy photos. When the relationship broke down boy blackmailed the girl saying that he will publish the photos unless she pays 50000(tk) to the boy. Then she filed a case Shahbagh Thana, Dhaka.
Public prosecutor of cyber tribunal Nazrul Islam said,” majority of the cases of the tribunal are nearly same in nature. A boy had a relation with a girl and then pictures or videos of their private moments are uploaded in Facebook or porn sites. In most cases the perpetrator is an ex-husband or boyfriend. Also, in maximum instances, the victim wasn’t aware that the criminal was recording her pictures or videos.”
Jahidul Imran, a college going boy living in Goshairhat, Shariatpur a brilliant student, fall in love with a girl. The girl did not love him much but she acted as a pure loving person. She makes intimacy relationship to take photos and videos that was not known by the boy that the girl will demand money showing him those obscene. After four months the girl showed these and demand money. She said that she will make it public unless he pays to her. Considering the social status he pays her so that his status is maintained.
A survey was held dated 6 February, 2019 among the Dhaka University’s 4 students. One of the students told, “Really women are the ultimate victims in the cyberspace. Their emotional mind is used to make gain by the criminals”. Another student said, “Cyber crimes are growing very fast. It should be stopped making security measures. Both male and female are the victims of it. But as they using or connecting with cyberspace they are in risk for cyber crimes “.
Another survey was held on 14 February, 2019 among 8 persons at Hatirjhil, Dhaka. The survey wanted to know whether women in Bangladesh are victim of cyber crime or not. Among all, 3 persons are not concern about cyber crimes in Bangladesh. Even they don’t know what cyber crime is. Among five, one said, “Actually due to riding use of Internet not only women but also men are in risk of cyberspace illegal activities.”Another said, “College and university going girl students is the victim for using Internet restlessly. They are not using strong password in their social media. Maximum girls updated their status. Hence the criminals or miscreants get chance to harass them in many ways receiving information from their used social media.”
In 2011, at Nagerpara in Shariatpur a girl named Swarna Khan becomes victim of electronic media. A boy named Momin Sardar makes relation with Swarna. One day they go to a field at night to make intimate relation. When they were in sex, Momin’s village younger brothers named Bayzid Molla and Abdullah Al Noman took their video. Momin wanted to marry her. He tried to convince her and her family to give her marriage to Momin Sardar. But family members and she refused to marry him. Again and again he tried to convince them. At last he threaded to publish the secret video. But they were not convinced in any time.
Getting revenge he published it in a computer shop at Nagerpara Bazar. Then it became viral at that Thana of Goshairhat. In this case Momin was sentenced to keep in jail for few years. Here Momin did not ask any demands from them. He only wanted to marry her at any cost. Due to cyberspace it became a discussing topic in that area.
We can mention an event that was happened in 2012 at Ramu in Cox’s bazar in Bangladesh. There was a fake facebook account which publishes Holy Quran making desecration. It becomes viral in the social media and the Muslims of the country become agitated and destroyed many houses and people of Buddhist religion. It is proved that Bangladesh is in risk of illegal cyber activities. 10
Quota Movement 2018 in Bangladesh becomes speedy due to rumors in social media. Some miscreants published rumors in the social media like facebook accounts or facebook pages. At midnight on Sunday, 8 April, 2018, a rumor published that one of the protesters was killed by firing rubber bullet of police. Next day the victim person makes live video that it was fake news and he was sound.
This rumor spread the movement throughout the country. There was another rumor that Chhatra League’s Kabi Sufia Kamal Hall unit President Iffat Jahan Isha had tortured a demonstrator and cut her tendon. On basis of fake news in the social media the movement turns against chatraleague leader Isha. After investing all of the matters police claimed that spreading rumors in the social media to disorder natural situation are to be regarded as cyber Crimes.12
On 17 February, 2019 Rapid Action Battalion of Bangladesh detained 5 people. They spread propaganda and committed fraud creating fake facebook account in different names including the name of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.11
These types of crimes are available in our society. Women are blackmailed by surroundings in many ways. According to Qazi MH Supon, teacher of Dhaka University law department states in the daily star, “Like the real space crimes, women are the main target of many cyber crimes”
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Why are they attacked more?
At present not only in developed countries but also countries like us are greatly associated with Internet technology. There are few who doesn’t use mobile phone with internet. For using Internet more and more they are engaged with different social Medias like facebook, linkedin, Twitter etc. Having account criminals have access to connect with them. Making friendship or any other way they abuse them and crimes are held. More the 93 percent of these subscribers use internet on mobile phones, rest of them are ISP or PSTN users (BTRC, 2018).
As of April, 2018 total number of people using mobile phones are more than 150 million (BTRC, 2018).Teen girls and young ladies are very much victims of cyber crimes. They recklessly use Internet technology even keeping the study or respective tasks beside. These are threatening their life and destroying their goodwill and even taking away their money and life.”In mid-August, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested two mobile phone repairmen, Sabuj and Madhu. They were found guilty of using their jobs to acquire personal information and content from various women.
The two men would take these files from the mobile phones of women who brought them in for repair. They also accessed their IMO messenger apps and ran them in parallel on their own devices, reading personal messages. The duo used all this information to blackmail a number of women”
In Bangladesh, Internet technology has been developed very much. Those who are new users of social media they feel curiosity if any text or attachment or email comes to their devices, they instantly try to open it. As they open it their details go to the criminal.
Women are generally soft minded if they can be convinced. After convincing them, the man or woman who targets the users harasses them making video or taking secret information from them. They fall in troublesome due to cyber criminals.
Read more about cyber crime
Writer: Mithun Kumar Saha, Department of Law, University of Dhaka.
References
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1. Arifur Rahman Rabbi, Published at 03:29 pm September 21st, 2017 last updated at 01:24 am September 23rd, 20
2. BTRC. (2018, April 30). Mobile Phone Subscribers Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission: http://www.btrc.gov.bd/content/mobile-phone-subscribers-bangladesh-april…
3. BNWLA. (2014). Survey on Psychological Health of Women Dhaka: Bangladesh National Women Lawyers’ Association.
4. https://www.thedailystar.net
5. https://www.genderit.org/
6. Preetha, S. S. (2015, May 16). Digital Sexual Harassment in Digital Bangladesh. The Daily Star. https://www.thedailystar.net/in-focus/digital-sexual-harassment-digital-…
7. Chowdhury, S. (2016). Proceeding from BLAST’95. Report of Expert Consultation Responding to Violence against Women and Girls in the Cyber Age. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319269676_Report_of_Expert_Cons…
8. The Independent, 06 July 2015
9. The Daily Prothom Alo, 06 October, 10. The Daily Prothom Alo, 06 October, 2015
11. BTRC. (2018, April 30). Internet Subscribers. Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission: http://www.btrc.gov.bd/content/internet-subscribers-bangladesh-april-2018
12. BTRC. (2018, April 30). Mobile Phone Subscribers. Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission: http://www.btrc.gov.bd/content/mobile-phone-subscribers-bangladesh-april…
13. https://www.thedailystar.net/ 10. http://bdlawdigest.org/ 11. https://www.thedailystar.net/tags/cyber-crime
14.https://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/special/2018/04/17/rumours-fake-news-shaped-quota-reform-protest
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