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Paris Olympics: Gold medallist boxer Imane Khelif files complaint over ‘moral harassment’

The 25-year-old Algerian woman, who won the Olympic final in her category on Friday, August 9, has been the target for the past week of an online hate campaign regarding her gender identity.

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https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/08/11/paris-olympics-gold-medallist-boxer-imane-khelif-files-complaint-over-moral-harassment_6712594_7.html

After the boxing tournament comes the legal battle. Just hours before winning the gold medal in the women’s 66kg Olympic boxing tournament against China’s Yang Liu on Friday, August 9, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif began a different battle in the courts. Having been the victim, for more than a week, of a virulent smear campaign concerning her gender identity, the boxer filed a complaint against X with the Paris correctional court’s, national center for combating online hate.

The complaint, which Le Monde had the opportunity to see, centers around online “moral harassment.” Her victory resulting from the withdrawal in the quarter-finals of her opponent, Italian boxer Angela Carini, on August 1, triggered a flood of hate messages around the world across social media: She was described as a “transgender” person deliberately competing in the wrong category, and even a “man” guilty of “violence against women.”

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https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/08/11/paris-olympics-gold-medallist-boxer-imane-khelif-files-complaint-over-moral-harassment_6712594_7.html

Condemning “speculation fueled by malicious individuals,” her lawyer, Nabil Boudi, stated in the complaint that “these messages were posted by important political figures,” which contributed to their widespread distribution on the X platform, where they were said to have “exceeded 100 million views.” This snowballing controversy turned into a real “ordeal” for the 25-year-old Algerian boxer, who was in the middle of an Olympic competition.

A ‘massive’ and ‘coordinated’ campaign
A simple tweet from Philippe Vardon, a candidate for Eric Zemmour’s far-right Reconquête! party in the recent European elections and now a parliamentary assistant to three MPs affiliated with the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) group, referring to “blows inflicted by a man against a woman,” ended up getting 3.4 million views. A tweet by former RN lawmaker Gilbert Collard, describing the boxer as an “Algerian transsexual,” has been seen over a million times.

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