Nepal is cracking down on online abuse directed at survivors of last month’s deadly floods, with Prime Minister Balendra Shah warning that authorities will “show no leniency” to people who “belittle” those who are suffering. Some have taken to social media to appeal for information about their loved ones and to urge officials to step up search efforts, only to be hit by hostile comments. “People who make unnecessary remarks, belittle those in pain or seek to cause them further suffering at this sensitive time are criminals,” Shah wrote in a Facebook post. Nepali police say they are looking into where these comments have originated from to identify addresses and phone numbers.
A woman, whose brother has been missing since the floods hit two weeks ago, had earlier told the BBC that search and rescue operations were too slow. “If the government had mobilised experts and equipment for rescue in time, would we have known the condition of our family members sooner? “We still hope we can find him alive.” Days later, she wrote back saying she had “received many nasty comments” in response to her criticism of the search efforts. “We are already suffering so much and this has only added to our pain,” she said.
In a separate case, a young woman had expressed her anger at what she perceived as authorities’ “lack of urgency” in searching for her husband. “My husband is missing now, if the government cannot find him, can it at least show me his body?” she said in a video clip that has gone viral online – and attracted its fair share of insults. One comment, for instance, urged her to “jump into the river” and help with the search, while another read, “not everything happens just by you putting the blame on the government”. But others have called out the insensitive remarks.
“The victim should be consoled at this time, not cursed,” one of them read. Nepali police say they have convened a 10-member committee to look into these online comments. Under the country’s Electronic Transactions Act, those who use social media to defame or harass others could be jailed for up to five years and fined up to 100,000 rupees ($662; £490), or both. Dovan Rai, the executive director of Body & Data, a Nepal-based non-profit organisation that advocates for a safe digital space, says some of the insensitive comments could have come from social media users who engage in “rage baiting” – that is, those who produce negative content as a “bait” to trigger outrage, or force people to click on or share their posts.
They could also have come from “staunch supporters of the government”. “There is also extremism that is very sympathetic to the government and condemns those who question it. That has further polarized the dialogue on social media,” she told the BBC.
