- Hundreds of posts on Telegram and other apps show non-consensual content being shared and even sold, while advocates and survivors say too little is being done to stop it
- As similar groups proliferate in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and South Korea, some women – and a few men – have decided to take action
This is the second in a series of stories on image-based abuse supported by the Judith Neilson Institute’s Asian Stories project, in collaboration with The Korea Times, Indonesia’s Tempo magazine, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, and Manila-based ABS-CBN. Sonia Sarkar, Tashny Sukumaran and Lee Min-young contributed reporting. The piece contains descriptions of a sexual nature. This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing.
Amala*, 22, from Malaysia, recalls the day it felt like her mobile phone would never stop lighting up with Instagram follow requests from men.
“My stomach instantly dropped when I realised what was going on,” she said. A male friend later told her that her Instagram posts and username had been shared with some 40,000 members of the Telegram channel V2K.