Some women have given up with the police as some of their sextortion complaints have been pending for about 6 to 7 years - FWCC

The Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre has raised serious concerns in the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, that some women have given up with the police as some of their sextortion complaints have been pending for about 6 to 7 years.

FWCC lawyer, Stephanie Dunn says women’s private numbers and addresses are being shared and there have been cases of people installing cameras instead of security systems.

FWCC Coordinator, Shamima Ali adds that issues such as people installing cameras in houses have ended up in black mailing crimes.

They are calling on government to ratify the Budapest Convention or Convention on Cybercrime so that it tackles the many issues of women being disproportionately targeted to experience every form of online abuse.

While making their submission to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, FWCC Head of Legal, Miliana Tarai says should Fiji decide to become a state party to this convention, then it should ensure human rights, democracy and rule of law be placed at the centre of the convention to avoid a one sided application and enforcement in the future.

Tarai adds that having the proper procedural safeguard in place will also neutralize the threat to human rights and civil liberties.

Tarai says that Fiji should consider the Istanbul Convention as the Budapest Convention does not recognize gender.

She believes that gender shapes and influences online behaviour and it also affects access to justice for survival victims of online gender based violence such as cyber stalking, revenge porn, sextortion, gender based violence and hate speech.

While stating the advantages of the convention, Stephanie Dunn says some of the issues include harmful online posts taking longer to be removed from the internet and reasons provided to them include law enforcers lacking the jurisdiction to law enforcers unaware of the law to expertise or resources to bring the post down are not available.

The Convention on Cybercrime remains the most relevant international agreement on cybercrime and electronic evidence and is complemented by an effective follow up mechanism and by capacity building programmes, which are fed back into the Committee, contributing towards the Convention’s evolution.

We have sent questions to the Fiji Police Force.