Pervert incident (2019)

The Pevert incident (訞案, ′jaw-′anh) refers to a controversial Twitter response message sent through the official account of the Themiclesian Marines, accusing the Freedom Warriors to be "perverts".  Due to the offensive connotations of the term, the authority by which it was sent was internally investigated as the message was retracted, resulting in the dismissal of Dr. Geoffrey Gwjang L′jei, Captain-general of Marines.

Messages

On Nov. 29, 2019, the Freedom Warriors sent a message tagging the Themiclesian Marines' official account, warning them that any mistreatment of prisoners will be exposed, using the hashtags #HumanRights and #Watching. These hashtags were used in the Vyzhvan Civil War to allege misconduct by Kolodorian forces against Vyzhvan civilians, which has now been identified as ethnic cleansing. It is accepted that the context of this message is the 2018 – 19 multinational operation in Idacua against cartel power in the province of Tábira, in which the Themiclesian Marines participated with around 400 men, fighting aginst Freedom Warriors' detachment that aided the cartels. Apparently, the Themiclesians took some members of FW as prisoners late in 2019, prompting FW's to send the message to warn against committing war crimes on the prisoners. In response, a message from the Themiclesian Marines' official account was sent, tagging the Freedom Warriors, accusing them to be "perverts". Within a few minutes of the response's appearance, several Themiclesian political leaders have criticized the message on the same platform. The Inner Administrator, the capital city's regional magistrate, called the message insensitive and asked for its withdrawal, and the Home Secretary and Cabinet Office soon followed. The message was retracted arond a half-hour since its appearance.

Analysis

It was initially doubted in the press how the government's strict Twitter policy allowed such a "loose tweet" to emerge; speculations on this subject were written in commentary in both the print and digital media. The Defence Secretary promised an internal investigation into the "offensive tweet".

In two weeks, the government published a partial report, which revealed that the Captain-general of Marines, Dr. Gwjang, was in a state of mental disarray when he commanded the message sent. According to this report, Gwjang was in a meeting with other officers when the tweet was reported to him; while none of the other officers were overly purturbed by the tweet, he suggested some of the other officers to be complicit with other allegations of abuses that have not been publicly reported. Another officer suggested that Freedom Warriors would allege anything to insult its enemies and there was no reason to believe that the tweet had any truth in it. Gwjang decided that he would not tolerate such insults and tabled the idea of sending a tweet to expose the hypocricy of the Freedom Warriors, including its own questionable record in maintenance of human rights. When asked by his principal secretary what this tweet should say, he said that Themiclesian marines have "insulted each other frequently and expertly and need no guidance to do the same to the FW". The minutes of the meeting were then passed to the Secretary for Public Relations. The partial report did not cover the incident beyond this point, since the meeting apparently "turned to other, sensitive topics".

The offensiveness of the word "pervert" (訞, ′jaw) was later analyzed in media. For some months, Themiclesian women have been organizing against sexual abuse and assertion of expressive freedom, and in some circles the word "pervert" has been used by males and skeptics of feminism to say that women have exposed themselves to sexual abuse by reason of their expressions. The word was felt to enshrine the concept of hypocricy, i.e. the idea that women demand respect for their bodies yet actively expose them to male predation. The Secretary of Public Relations apparently felt was appropriate as a comment on Freedom Warrior's calling to respect their rights as prisoners of war, while they themselves have committed numerous war crimes and verbally flaunted international rules about the treatment of prisoners of war. The Association of Themiclesian Women criticized this tweet in very strong terms, saying that the Freedom Warriors' monitions are "wholly legitimate", whatever their records are. The president of the ATW, Julie Ham, said that the "relationship between the forces and their prisoners is one of inequality in power, and there is nothing wrong to suggest that those in power need to be supervised; and the greater the disparity, the more supervision is required."

Response

Dr. Gwjang, Captain-general of Marines, was dismissed by ordinance on Dec. 28, 2019. He held the office pro tempore until Jan. 31, 2020, at which point his successor, Dr. Margaret Skur, took office.

Gwjang's statements

Gwjang later released statements apologizing for his indiscretion and affirmed Julie Ham's comments; he "expresses profound regret for his mistakes" and asked his successors not to make similar ones in the future.

It is never difficult to treat well and respect those who do the same for us in return. Principles are tested in a position of power; character is tested in the possibility of concealment; morality is tested when an easier, more fulfilling alternative is at hand. Throughout my tenure there I sought to ensure that a commitment to good does not become a license for evil, that mistreatment of the under-privileged, disempowered which characterizes so many others does not characterize the one I govern.

Conspiracy theories

In some anonymous groups, the fact that Gwjang's successor, Skur, was female was brought up in connection with his dismissal; however, it is also pointed out that Gwjang was planning retirement for 2020, so Skur had no real motivation to engineer his downfall. Additionally, Skur was also not a well-liked figure amongst Themiclesian feminists. In the 1998 edition of Themiclesian Women, she was interviewed with 100 other female military officers, and the editors said that she had "disappointingly little to share". She then said she was not an authoritative speaker on the problems of gendered structures in the military, since she "prefers to deal with computers more than humans".

See also

• Themiclesia