He said, “I’m the one who made the video about the acid. Please delete it from your page. I'm going to try to make another video to make things better.” I asked him to make another video stating clearly that people should not to carry out acid attacks against women’s rights activists. But he didn’t do that, he just settled for apologies. After his video was posted, we received numerous threats of acid attacks, rape, and murder. [Editor’s note: The Observers team viewed these messages and will not publish them due to their violent nature.] These hateful messages were then shared on pages that have more than a million members, many of whom are teenagers who might easily be influenced.



Some of these people managed to get a lot of Facebook pages that promote women's rights deleted by reporting them en masse. Our Femmes insoumises page was deleted and my own page was also blocked.



We noticed that a lot of the men who sent us death threats are living abroad. But many Algerians also messaged us saying that they had reported the man who made the video to the British police. Others alerted the French police. We've received many messages of support from Algerians on social media.

Apparement les menaces d’attaques à l’acide se multiplient contre les féministes, il ne faut pas hésiter à faire des captures d’écran et à porter plaintes, les plaintes doivent être massives. La cause des femmes est aussi celle des hommes ! #Algerie Hassan Guenfici (@Guenfici_Hassan) 3 avril 2019

Daria, who lives in the Mediterranean coast city of Béjaïa, said the man left her a voicemail on Wednesday.

One Twitter user reminded people to take screenshots of threats of acid attacks and file police complaints, adding that, "The fight for women's rights is also a man's fight!"

Repeal of the Algerian family code

Women’s rights activists have joined the widespread political protests in Algeria in recent weeks, with a new demand: the repeal of the family code, which severely limits women's rights in marriage. Their presence has riled some protesters, who on March 29 surrounded and shouted insults at a group of women carrying a banner that called for gender equality in front of a university building in Algiers.



An activist using the pseudonym Milord Barzotti, who is a friend of our Observer Daria, was shoved that day as she hung posters calling for the repeal of the family code. Daria told The Observers that the poster campaign was part of a coordinated effort from several Facebook groups, including Femmes insoumises, Les Algériennes (Algerian Women), Enough Algeria, and Srabbles, planned before the political protests began in mid-February.