Manama: A Saudi academic and researcher has been referred to the judiciary on charges of defamation after she launched a hashtag campaign to condemn fraud, forgery and plagiarism.
Sahar Al Khashrami, a professor of special education at a university in Saudi Arabia, said that she had started the Twitter campaign after she failed for one-and-a-half-years to secure her rights despite numerous well-documented official correspondences with the competent authorities.
Sahar said that she was a victim of plagiarism four years ago when she worked on a project that a colleague later stole from her and presented it as his own.
She criticised the lack of commitment to ethics by some researchers and hoped that the hashtag “Saraqooni” (My work has been stolen) would highlight the extent of corruption and scheming in the research field, local daily Makkah reported.
“I thought that social media would be the best way to reach officials quickly and alert them about instances of violations,” she said. “However, I now find myself referred to the judiciary on the charge of defamation based on a loophole in Article Three of the 2010 Anti-Cyber Crime Law.”
The article stipulates imprisonment for up to one year and a fine of up to 500,000 Saudi riyal (Dh489,369), or either punishment, for anyone found guilty of “defamation and infliction of damage upon others through the use of various information technology devices.”
But while Sahar received tremendous support from netizens, mainly academics, who denounced all forms of plagiarism, fraud and unethical attitudes, she was also criticised by social network users, particularly lawyers, who said that the proper way to handle disputes was through the proper legal channels.
Some lawyers refuted the claim Article Three had a loophole.
