Saudi Twitter accounts continue to target journalists Ghada Oueiss and Ola Fares
Prominent Al Jazeera news anchor Ghada Oueiss and her
colleague Ola Fares have been targeted in what researchers say is a “systemic”
online harassment campaign by Saudi Arabian social media accounts.
While Oueiss had been viciously harassed online in the past,
the two women were most recently subject to an avalanche of online attacks in early
June, with Twitter users spreading private pictures of Oueiss in a swimsuit,
which were stolen from her phone after hacking it, with denigrating
accusations, messages and innuendos on how the journalists had achieved their
successful careers.
An analysis by Marc Owen Jones, a researcher and professor
at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar, found that the campaign – which
resulted in over 25,000 tweets and retweets in just 24 hours – was driven by
numerous prominent Saudi Twitter accounts.
Oueiss recently covered several issues that are a thorn in
Saudi Arabia’s side, including the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi,
leading to concerns that the attacks were retaliation for the journalist’s
coverage.
IPI Executive Director Barbara Trionfi condemned the
harassment campaign.
“We are appalled at the vicious online attacks on Ghaida
Oueiss and Ola Fares, which not only aim to discredit their work and reputation
but also silence them through a campaign of intimidation,” Trionfi said.
History of being targeted online
Oueiss told IPI that she reported the tweets that originally
shared the content with Twitter but received a slow response, which she said
allowed the massive dissemination of the content to continue.
Originally from Lebanon, Oueiss is not a stranger to being
the target of online smear campaigns. “The first attacks began back in 2011
during the Arab Spring and intensified in 2013, while covering the war in
Syria, where I was labelled as a ‘terrorist’s sexual slave’ by al-Assad
internet brigades,” she said in a phone conversation with IPI.
Since then, the number of misogynistic online attacks has
only grown, ranging from doctored pin-up pictures with her face cropped in to
cartoons implying that she engaged in sexual favours to advance her career to
Twitter accounts impersonating her. In the offline world, there have been
missed calls from unknown phone numbers that she believes were meant to
intimidate her.
“I didn’t want these attacks to curb my journalism. I did
not give in to the threats. So, I repeated to myself ‘Ghada, you have to be
even stronger now’,” Oueiss said, reflecting on the hours right after her
private pictures where exposed on June 2. “It took a lot of energy, but this is
the price I pay for being a good Arab female professional journalist.”
State actors and smear campaigns
Previous IPI research has shed light on how powerful state
actors have increasingly resorted to online harassment and smear campaigns as a
strategy to control the narrative and intimidate critical voices into silence.
Owen Jones noted that Saudi Arabia has carried out
disinformation campaigns against its critics on social media in the past. It
has used other electronic means, too. Earlier this year, IPI joined calls for
an investigation into the Kingdom’s alleged hacking of Washington Post owner
Jeff Bezos’s phone. Khashoggi, whose murder trial began last week in Istanbul,
worked as a columnist at The Post. Other journalists have reported being
targeted by similar Saudi hacking efforts.
The smear campaign against Oueiss and Fales was also
condemned by Agnes Callemard, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial
killings who led an investigation into Khashoggi’s 2018 murder and was herself
targeted online.
“These types of attacks threaten press freedom through the
toll they can take on victims, leaving them wondering whether it is worth
covering the news and present the facts,” Trionfi noted. “Unfortunately, this
is very likely what the organizers of coordinated campaigns aim at, which is
why it is important to stand in solidarity with journalists subject to such
abuse.”
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