Marvi Sirmed, a well known pakistani journalist, has been receiving death threats via Facebook. It started on March 28, when Marvi reported that account to FB management. FB very kindly took it down. But since then, two more accounts have popped up with exactly the same message, using her pictures stolen from my private FB album. A person named Saqib Hussain posted a fake story linking Mrs. Sirmed to that and invited public support to kill her. On this post, a journalist named Mian Ghaffar, who reportedly works for Daily Khabrain, encouraged him and offered Marvi Sirmed's personal information. Within couple of hours of multiple complaints by many people about Saqib Hussain’s threatening post, Facebook management took down the profile. Two days later, two more accounts using the exact same post with her pictures, with same public request to help them killing her. Photos stolen from Sirmed’s Facebook account were made public, along with other personal details, including her home address, ID card number, and other contact details. One of these two accounts belongs to Mr. Mohammadzada Agra, who on his FB page claims to be the office holder of Insaf Student Federation (ISF), which is PTI’s student wing. Mr. Agra has many photos on his page in which he is seen sitting, standing, walking and talking quite closely to not only Prime Minister Imran Khan, but also to the Defence Minister Pervez Khattak and Finance Minister Asad Umar, among other PTI prominent leaders. The other account is named “UNews LiveTv”, which the page claims is owned by some Yaseen Chatha who is also a self proclaimed journalist. Marvi Sirmed registered a complain with FIA against the Facebook account holders asking to identify and book under law the people inciting to murder her. Useless to say, FIA did not even acknowledge Marvi Sirmed's complain.
Stringer Asia strongly support Marvi Sirmed and all the other journalists receiving every day death threats just for doing their job. The situation is even worst when it comes to women journalists, particularly targeted on social media and in the society.