She and her colleagues use social media to campaign for gender equality online by challenging gender norms and attitudes towards women in Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation.
They highlight highly sensitive issues in the largely conservative Christian country, including sexual harassment and rape as well as traditional practices such as female genital mutilation and child marriage.
But their work often comes at great cost.
“My colleagues and I have received threats online that have become increasingly violent, especially after we engaged in social media activism regarding women’s rights,” Betelehem told AFP.
“Death threats, sexual harassment, gang rape and threats of physical harm are commonplace.”
Betelehem co-founded the Ethiopian Women Human Rights Defenders Network (EWHRDN) and an advocacy platform called Afro Feminism — Seta Set Power (Women in Power) in 2021.
Since then, her social media and email accounts have been hacked and private information, including photos and her home address, stolen and shared online.
Her contact details were posted along with photos on a prostitution page on Telegram, she said, and many men contacted her seeking sexual favours.
“The revenge porn I was confronted with was so painful… I am a married woman with two children,” she said, breaking down in tears.
“The attack caused unimaginable psychological damage to me and my family.”
At an event in Addis Ababa, Betelehem said she was physically harassed by men who followed her to the toilet and threatened her life in a bid to silence her.
“I was forced to move my home twice within two years”, in 2022 and again last year. “Two of my colleagues were also forced to move under similar threats.”
According to research published in May by a UK-based non-profit, online abuse against women in Ethiopia is forcing them to restrict their involvement in public life, both on and offline.
“Technology-facilitated gender-based violence has been so pervasive in Ethiopia for so long that it is underestimated,” Felicity Mulford, head of research at the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), told AFP at the study’s launch.
“It is normalised and invisible.”
Women and girls in Ethiopia are subject to more online hate than men at almost 78 percent of the total, according to the CIR report.
Mulford said the research had also found that feminist activists were often accused of homosexuality, putting them at further risk.
Gay sex is illegal for men and women in Ethiopia and some offences can carry a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.
“As we continued to advocate for gender equality, some people on social media began labelling us as lesbian LGBTQ advocates,” Betelehem said.
