The Fiji Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Commission has lodged a complaint with the Police and the Online Safety Commission to investigate the death of a social media influencer who allegedly committed suicide after experiencing bullying and relentless harassment on a public chat forum on Facebook.
The Commission is urging collective action from relevant stakeholders to combat cyberbullying, harassment, and hate speech on social media platforms. This comes in the wake of reports that a member of the LGBTI community and a social media influencer was allegedly driven to suicide due to online bullying.
“Cyberbullying violates numerous human rights, including the right to life, privacy, and dignity,” said the Commission’s chairperson. “It is alleged that the deceased was humiliated, threatened, and abused on this popular public-chat forum by those commenting, some of whom were anonymous account holders.
“The Commission is concerned that those managing public-chat forums on social media are failing to moderate and control hateful comments on their pages. The responsibility lies with the administrators of these Facebook pages and those commenting, and they must face the full brunt of the law.
“Freedom of speech carries responsibilities and has limitations. Section 17 (3)(b) (i) of the Constitution of the Republic of Fiji states that a law may limit, or authorize the limitation of, free speech to protect the reputation, privacy, dignity, rights, or freedoms of other persons, including the right to be free from hate speech, whether directed against individuals or groups. Social media users must respect this.
“Additionally, Section 26 (3) (a) of the Constitution states that a person must not be unfairly discriminated against, directly or indirectly, on the grounds of his or her actual or supposed personal characteristics or circumstances, including gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression.”
The post Human Rights Commission files Police complaint over alleged suicide appeared first on Fiji One News.