Afghan taekwondo athlete within the girls’s -57kg class and an IOC Refugee Athlete Scholarship-holder Marzieh Hamidi, takes half in a coaching session at INSEP (Nationwide Institute of Sport, Experience, and Efficiency) a Olympic and Paralympic coaching centre in Paris on June 29, 2023. (Picture by JOEL SAGET / AFP)
Paris prosecutors mentioned Monday they had been investigating on-line threats in opposition to feminine Afghan taekwondo fighter Marzieh Hamidi, who fled to France in 2021 after the Taliban seized energy in Kabul.
Hamidi had suffered “cyber-harassment together with demise, rape and different threats by way of social media,” the prosecutors mentioned.
Article continues after this commercial
They added {that a} specialist on-line hate unit was investigating.
READ: Barred from sports activities, Afghan girls search aid in secretive train
“I would like the terrorists threatening me with demise to be recognized and tried in court docket, in order that I can dwell freely with out concern and in full security,” Hamidi mentioned in an announcement despatched to AFP.
The martial artist “has been positioned below police safety for an indefinite interval,” mentioned her attorneys Ines Davau, including that “we hope the perpetrators of the threats will probably be swiftly recognized”.
Article continues after this commercial
Hamadi didn’t handle to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics in her under-57 kilograms (126 kilos) class.
READ: Afghan taekwondo para-athlete wins first medal for Refugee Group
However she has been within the media highlight in France for “talking out publicly about girls’s rights and the Taliban regime,” in keeping with her September 3 prison criticism, seen by AFP.
The doc states that the present wave of threats adopted her denunciation on social media of an August Taliban legislation barring girls’s voices from being heard in public.
Hamidi reiterated her opposition to the legislation in a press interview and launched the social media hashtag #letusexist.
READ: No future for ladies like me, says exiled Afghan soccer participant
From the afternoon of September 1, “an enormous wave of hatred smashed down on her… her Afghan Whatsapp telephone quantity was shared and he or she obtained lots of of calls and 1000’s of messages within the area of only a few hours,” the criticism learn.
Hamidi’s prison criticism specifies the offences of sharing non-public data, malicious telephone calls, demise or rape threats, on-line harassment and on-line sexual harassment.
