Suicide attempts... Yemeni women pay dearly for extortion in a ruthless society

Yemeni activist Sarah Alwan's hint on Facebook that she might commit suicide because of two people who tried to blackmail her with her photos, was not taken seriously. Hours later, she shot a gun in her chest. It is one of the cases of extortion.

When activist Sarah Alwan hinted on her Facebook page that she might commit suicide because of two people who tried to blackmail her with her pictures, it was not taken seriously.

But hours later, she fired a gun at her chest, and fortunately for her, the bullet missed the heart.

Sarah overcame her ordeal after she was transferred to intensive care in the hospital, and her father - who appeared in a video recording broadcast by the security authorities in Taiz Governorate, southwestern Yemen - said that her condition is stable.

Sarah is active in humanitarian initiatives such as distributing aid to the displaced and helping cancer patients.

Months ago, she reported to the police that she had been blackmailed, but the latter did not intervene, according to Sarah, which prompted her to attempt suicide.

The incident sparked a storm of solidarity among Yemenis on social media, and brought back a reminder of a complex file in a conservative country that imposes severe restrictions on women and deals with them with extreme sensitivity. In the best circumstances, families reject women who are subjected to extortion.

There are no official statistics in Yemen on the scale of electronic extortion, but Yemeni activists confronting blackmail networks and extortionists talk about 6 suicides of girls who were blackmailed by publishing their photos.

Activist Fahmy the researcher, a founding member and former president of the Internet Society in Yemen, told Al-Jazeera Net that he and a group of volunteers receive dozens of cases of extortion every week.

Extortion for money

Bushra (a pseudonym) lives in a state of daily anxiety that turns into a phobia of the phone, as she expects - at any moment - that someone may send her pictures that her husband took of her before their separation a year ago.

She tells Al-Jazeera Net that her ex-husband began blackmailing her when she joined the job and began to receive a good salary of about $500 per month, but she refused to respond to him.

She added, "I thought he was threatening me just to give him money, but the sky darkened in my eyes when an unknown number sent me my picture so that I had to negotiate with him...and I paid him money."

Bushra thought it would be a one-off, but her husband blackmailed her again into depression, during which she contemplated suicide.

With the help of her sister, she risked talking to her family and sought help from them, so that her husband pledged to stop blackmailing her and delete her photos, but she lives in fear of a recurrence of the incident.

Society is very discreet in dealing with cases of extortion, and families often abandon the victims, and their lives become hell, as the victim is accused in front of her family of destroying the family's reputation.

Expelled from the village

In a village in Ibb Governorate, in central Yemen, the looks of contempt and inferior treatment from the residents prompted Abu Ammar and his family to leave his village permanently, despite the father spending everything he had accumulated during his years of exile outside the country to build the family home there.

Walid Ahmed, one of the villagers, told Al-Jazeera Net that the story began when pictures of Abi Ammar's daughter were leaked through her phone's memory to one of the young men.

Because her father was well off, the young man blackmailed the girl into marriage.

And when she refused to publish her photos in public.

He added, "The young man who leaked the photos from the community was reprimanded a little, but the girl and her family were the victims, given that the family allowed the girl to have a phone with which she took pictures of herself. This is a clear condemnation of her, and she deserves what happened to her."

wider dimension

Electronic extortion operations took on a broader dimension in light of the proliferation of phones, as pictures of women began to leak in spontaneous sessions in which they danced to the music, and these videos often cause extortion campaigns for women.

But the most common method is blackmailers talking to girls on social media and instant messengers, and making them fall in love.

The matter develops when the girl sends a picture of herself without a veil, and at that time the blackmail chain begins to obtain other pictures or push the girl to commit immoral acts.

Because the girl does not feel safe and fears her family's response, which may amount to murder, she is forced to implement the blackmailer's wishes and hide the blackmail and pressure she is exposed to.

Activist Sarah Alwan shot herself in the chest to commit suicide, as a result of blackmailing a young man who obtained a "flash" of her personal photos.

She wrote that she was going to God, to escape from a "hideous world", and "with God the adversaries gather"

after terrible days, she overcame the danger with successful surgery, thank God.

Blackmailing a girl should not be tolerated in a society that sees her as his title of honor.

pic.twitter.com/9uzYBH6fL6

- Dr.

Muhammad Jumeh (@MJumeh) November 5, 2022

"Girls who are subjected to blackmail should not respond to the blackmailer and refuse to comply with his demands, regardless of the size of the threat, and delete any correspondence between them, no matter how inappropriate, and ban communication with him completely," lawyer and feminist activist Widad al-Halak told Al Jazeera Net.

She advises the victim to tell someone she trusts, preferably from her family.

At that time, she must go to the nearest police station, and if her complaint is ignored, she must seek the help of organizations concerned with protecting women from violence.

In the country that has been witnessing an ongoing war between the Houthi group and the internationally recognized government for 8 years, electronic blackmail has been employed politically to blackmail government officials and activists from all sides, according to Fahmy, the researcher.

In recent years, the researcher, along with others, established a voluntary initiative that raises awareness of digital safety and helps victims of extortion. They closed pages and accounts on communication sites that leaked pictures of girls, and pressured blackmailers to delete the photos.

#Sarah_Alwan, a young Yemeni woman and community activist, shot herself 8 months after the so-called #Amjad_Al-Maqtari blackmailed her and threatened to publish her photos after her flash memory was stolen.

Sarah filed a complaint with the security authorities, and the criminal remained free and free, covered up by society and what was left of the state until she decided to end her suffering pic.twitter.com/JkxNgD469r

- Yasameen Al-Nadheri Yasmine Al-Naziri (@YNadheri) November 3, 2022

friendly solutions

And because electronic extortion is recent, the provisions of the Yemeni law that have not been updated did not include it among the crimes, and the authorities deal with it as a condemnation commensurate with Articles 313 and 254 of the Yemeni Penal Code, according to what says the police spokesman in Taiz Governorate, Lieutenant Colonel Osama Al-Sharabi.

Article 313 stipulates that “anyone who willfully sends fear of harming him or any other person of concern to him or to any other person of concern shall be punished with imprisonment for a period not exceeding 5 years, or with a fine.”

As for Article 254, it states that “whoever threatens another by any means to commit a crime, a harmful act, or an act that falls on him, his spouse, or one of his relatives up to the fourth degree, shall be punished with imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year or a fine, if the threat is likely to cause panic among the who signed it."

According to Lt. Col. Al-Sharabi, many extortion cases do not reach the police, as the victims are reluctant to submit reports to the official authorities due to social restrictions and fear of family and community response.

Al-Sharabi told Al-Jazeera Net, "As for us, we are a police force. We deal with any communication that reaches us according to legal procedures. After the arrest and completion of the procedures, we refer the case file to the prosecution, but there is a tendency towards ending most cases and resolving them amicably."

And in mid-August, the Supreme Judicial Council of the internationally recognized government announced the establishment of a prosecution specialized in journalism, electronic publishing, and publications.

However, Fahmy, the researcher, says that before establishing a court or prosecution to deal with electronic cases, we need a law on electronic crimes.

community awareness

The activist Alwan's suicide attempt sparked a state of community solidarity.

However, Lubna al-Qudsi, a member of the General Secretariat of the Nasserist organization and a lawyer in the National Committee for Women (governmental), believes that Yemeni society is still conservative and views these issues as a red line, and any violation of dignity and honor must be washed with blood, and Sarah's story found solidarity because she went out to public after her suicide attempt.

And the security authorities in Taiz announced the arrest of those accused of extorting Sarah immediately, and Yemenis on the communication sites demanded not to be complacent with them if they were guilty.

Al-Qudsi told Al-Jazeera Net, "The girl is always the victim of the blackmailer, society and the family, as she is subjected to verbal and physical violence, and is viewed with contempt and inferiority, given that she committed a heinous crime. Therefore, society needs to raise awareness of these crimes and their danger to the girl, and that there are penalties for blackmailers ".

She explains, "Social initiatives that confront blackmailers and support girls in facing blackmail are an excellent step that we encourage, provided that these initiatives work with integrity, humanity, and honesty."