#MeToo: MJ Akbar to take the decision on the resignation

NP NEWS NETWORK

NEW DELHI

MJ Akbar, the junior minister for external affairs who is at the center of a #MeToo firestorm, will not be cutting short his foreign tour. Akbar, who is in Africa, will head to Malabo in Equatorial Guinea as he was scheduled to and is likely to return to India only by the weekend.

MJ Akbar, a former editor who is a junior foreign minister in the BJP-led government, was away in Nigeria’s Lagos for a Mahatma Gandhi event when the allegations surfaced against him.

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The accounts are from a time when Akbar held senior editorial positions in media firms. The women have described how Akbar used to conduct meetings and interviews in hotel rooms and exhibit “predatory” behavior.

At least one woman has accused Akbar of molesting her. Akbar was her editor when he allegedly molested her in his office cabin.

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Journalist Priya Ramani was the first to call him out, by naming him as the man in an incident she had shared in a magazine article when the Harvey Weinstein scandal in the US led to an explosion of #MeToo allegations.

The Me Too movement or #MeToo movement, with many local and international alternatives, is a movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault. #MeToo spread virally in October 2017 as a hashtag used on social media in an attempt to demonstrate the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace.

It followed soon after the sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein. Tarana Burke, an American social activist, and community organizer began using the phrase “Me Too” as early as 2006, and the phrase was later popularized by American actress Alyssa Milano, on Twitter in 2017. Milano encouraged victims of sexual harassment to tweet about it and “give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem”.

This was met with the success that included but was not limited to high-profile posts from several American celebrities, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd, Jennifer Lawrence, and Uma Thurman.