Website ‘Auctions’ Pictures Of Muslim Women, Taken Down After Outrage

By Ghazala Ahmad & Rushda Fathima Khan

In yet another blatant attempt of harassment and intimidation, hundreds of pictures of Muslim women were uploaded and put up for ‘auction’ on a website leading to massive outrage on social media.

A website called ‘Sulli Deals’ was created on GitHub, a free web platform, where Twitter handles and photos of Muslim women were put out without consent, allowing users to take their pick on the ‘deal of the day.’ Sulli is a derogatory term used to refer to Muslim women, by Hindu extremists.

The website and the pictures were widely shared on Twitter and other social media platforms, sharing their ‘deal of the day’.

Ajeet Bharti, former editor of the right-wing website Opindia Hindi tweeted saying, “Enjoy the quote tweets’ and the comments. Although I don’t know what the Sulli means, the use of technology as an open-source project should be welcome. If someone is bringing a good deal to the general mass, what can be wrong!”

The existence of the website was first brought to notice, after women on Twitter started sharing their horror and outrage after discovering their pictures on the site.

One victim, who goes by the name ‘K’ said she stumbled upon the site and identified one of her pictures listed for ‘auctioning’ along with other women.

“I was very furious, helpless and concerned about myself as well as for other women whose pictures were being misused on that app, she told The Cognate.

“I am not sad but angry, women are one of the softest targets for anyone. One can misuse our pictures, morph our photos into something else and we can’t do anything because they get all the support and impunity from the right-wing ecosystem and the government”.

“The worst part of all this is people are telling us not to post our pictures online. But what about the women who cover themselves under niqab and hijab? People misuse their pictures as well. No one is safe here”, she said.

Although the website has been taken down, after being reported, women like ‘K’ say the harassment will not stop with that.

“We don’t even know how many WhatsApp groups, Instagram pages or websites are circulating our pictures”.

And her fear is not unfound. Hours after the site was taken down, one Twitter handle, which claims to be ‘Sulli Dealer’s Right Hand’ announced they will be back soon.

Many Twitter handles claiming to be ‘Sulli Deals’ continue to share pictures of Muslim women with gross and offensive messages.

SAATH (Stand Against Abuse Troll Harassment), a group which tracks online harassment of women, said despite reporting the accounts to Twitter, they weren’t taken down.

This is not first time Muslim women have faced abuse online by Hindu extremists. According to a Newslaundry report, Ritesh Jha, a 23-year-old resident of Gurugram runs two channels on YouTube with a combined viewership of 200,000. The two accounts are “Liberal Doge” and “Secular Doge”. On 13 May the Liberal Doge channel began posting pictures of Pakistani women, saved without their permission from their social media accounts. The channel’s audience of 86,000 people were free to “rate” the women and “auction” them off to each other.

Scores of social media accounts with fake names—Farzana Begum (65,400 followers on Twitter), Zalim Hindu (1,420 followers),Pakiza Momina Alima (2,283 followers), Saira Besharam (2,128 followers) and Arjun Pandit (669 followers)—promote material that is not only pornographic but also glorifies sexual violence against Muslim women, an Article-14 report found.

Congress social media coordinator Hasiba Amin expressed her anger after she was subjected to online bidding where she was “sold to someone”.

One victim called the ones running these pages and ones supporting them as ‘potential rapists’.

Prominent women journalists and activists like Rana Ayyub, Arfa Khanum Sherwani and Safoora Zargar frequently face online abuse in the form of  slurs, name calling or their  morphed obscene pictures are uploaded by right-wing accounts for their critical stance over policies of the Modi government.

Right-wing accounts have been running a sustained campaign creating fake profiles of Muslim women where they are shown in a sexually degrading way. Muslim women are presented as slaves of Hindu men while Muslim men as “weak”.

Even Shaheen Bagh protestors against CAA were not spared as accounts shared morphed adult visuals and passed them as women protestors.