The Fiji Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Commission has lodged a complaint with Police and the Online Safety Commission to investigate the death of a social media influencer who was reportedly driven to commit suicide after experiencing bullying and relentless harassment on a public chat forum on Facebook.
The Commission is urging collective action from relevant stakeholders to tackle cyberbullying, harassment, and hate speech on social media platforms. This appeal comes following reports that a member of the LGBTI community and a social media influencer was allegedly driven to suicide due to online bullying.
“Cyberbullying violates a number of human rights including the right to life, the right to privacy, and the right to live with dignity,” said the Commission chairperson. “It is alleged that the deceased was humiliated, threatened, and abused on this popular public-chat forum by commenters, some of whom were anonymous.”
The Commission expressed concern that administrators of public-chat forums on social media are failing to moderate and control hate-comments on their pages. “The culpability lies with the administrators of the public chat-forum Facebook pages and those commenting, and they must face the full brunt of the law. Freedom of speech carries ‘responsibility’ 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 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.”
“Section 26 (3)(a) of the Constitution further 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.”