Digital violence is real violence: One activist's fight for safety and human rights

“When you get away from your abusers, you feel kind of safe, but digital violence is following you around everywhere you go”, says Ljubica Fuentes. 

Ljubica Fuentes remembers the moment everything changed.

As a law student at Ecuador's largest public university, she raised her hand in objection when her teacher declared that women weren't real lawyers – they were just there “to pick up some guy.” From that day onward, she became known as “feminazi” (a derogatory, insulting term) in her programme.

What started with classroom harassment soon escalated into a digital nightmare. Private messages on Instagram warned her to stop advocating for women's rights. Anonymous users flooded her campus Facebook page with threats. Notes and whispers circulated around campus with rape threats. One day, she heard that someone was hired to physically assault her.

“I realized that I needed to be outside of the campus for my sanity and integrity”, shares Fuentes, who fled to a semester abroad in the middle of the night. Today, she's a human rights lawyer and founder of an organization combating gender-based violence in higher education. 

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