Our colleague Ghada Owais said that she was shocked by the scale of the electronic attacks that targeted her during the last period, and stressed that she derives courage and determination to continue her work from heroines facing the tyranny regimes in the region.

In an article in The Washington Post, Aweys talked about using photos stolen from her personal phone to carry out an electronic attack via Twitter that included "insulting, false and hate allegations against women."

"This attack, accompanied by statements full of hatred and obscene speech, issued by a documented account on Twitter, shocked me violently."

She pointed out that most of the accounts that republished those pictures were pictures of the Saudi flag and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or a picture of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed, and Saudi and Emirati public figures also contributed to the promotion of these publications along the lines of the former commander of Dubai Police, Dahi Khalfan, Nayef Al-Asaker Al-Mufti in the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs and an ally close to the Crown Prince, and Hamad Al-Mazrouei, a partner who is close to the UAE Crown Prince.

Aweys explained that this is not the first time that she is a target of cyber bullying or a victim of a coordinated campaign on social networks, and said that her targeting of these repeated campaigns came due to submitting critical reports to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and considered that these attacks carry a clear message to journalists across the Middle East, which is " Do not criticize the Saudi Crown Prince and Emirati Crown Prince. "

Targeting for women

She said that the attacks that also targeted colleague Ola Al-Faris were not directed at them as journalists, but as two women who dared criticize, and added, "For these people, they seem unable to understand that a woman can succeed based on her competence or hard work."

She emphasized that the bravery of the detainees in Saudi Arabia because of their demands for women's rights, the bravery of many anonymous heroines, and the victims of authoritarian governments in the Middle East, inspire her to continue working "no matter how brutal and hatred of women in these rabid campaigns, and whatever the number of death threats that I receive."

Aweys recalled the memory of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was killed at his country's consulate in Istanbul, and said that the late journalist advised her to ignore and ban the accounts she targeted on Twitter.

"Although the man who is believed to be responsible for the murder of Jamal may never be held accountable, we must not allow him and those working for him to undermine one of the fundamental pillars of a free society, which is freedom of the press," she added.

It considered it unacceptable to allow such attacks to continue, and demanded that Twitter and the rest of the social networking sites take action to protect journalists, and to ensure that the misuse of their platforms by authoritarian regimes ceased.