British MP Tulip Rezwana Siddiq, granddaughter of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has said she is "remaining defiant" after her car was vandalized outside her family's home in a targeted attack.
Siddiq, who has served as the Member of Parliament for Hampstead and Kilburn since 2015, said the incident took place early on Thursday morning, shortly after she returned from the Labour Party conference in Brighton, reports the Guardian.
She awoke that morning to discover her car’s window smashed and a political message scrawled on the roof. There had been no theft. The wording made it evident that it was a targeted attack, she added, declining to explain what the message was.
“I’m not going to be daunted, I'm not going to stop doing what I do. It has to stop, but at the end of the day, I'm not going to back down,” Siddiq told the Guardian. “When I saw the car I just thought, I don’t know what you guys are trying to accomplish– you’re underestimating me.”
She said she was supported by all Labour and received a call from the Speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle.
Several female politicians have spoken out in recent years about a spike in abusive language and threats aimed at them.
Arooj Shah, the leader of the Oldham council, was the victim of a firebomb attack on her car last July, reports the Guardian.
In May, Shah became the first female Muslim council leader in the north. The incident, which damaged the surrounding property and was criticized by the legislators as
which caused damage to surrounding property and was condemned by legislators as awful and cowardly, left no one harmed.
In April, for sending hundreds of threatening, misogynistic and racist texts to Labour MP Jess Phillips, a white supremacist was jailed for more than two years, reports Guardian.
“I think that this intimidation of women must come to an end. Women are targeted because of their jobs, and they're in the public eye; and in the context of everything that has happened with the Sarah Everard case, it feels like we need a cultural shift,” Siddiq added.
“Online abuse can develop into things offline, and we need to nip it in the bud,” she said, calling on social networking companies to take more action to prevent abuse.
