India’s junior foreign minister MJ Akbar has filed a defamation suit against journalist Priya Ramani, one of at least 10 women who have accused the former editor of sexual harrasment.

The lawsuit filed on Monday names Ramani as the sole accused and says that she “intentionally put forward malicious, fabricated and salacious,” allegations to harm his reputation, according to Reuters news agency.

The lawsuit comes amid widespread calls on social media for Akbar’s resignation from his post as the minister of state for external affairs.

More than 200 protesters from the youth wing of the opposition Congress party waved placards and chanted slogans outside Akbar’s Delhi home on Monday. Some jumped barricades and clashed with police and dozens were detained, a Reuters witness said.

Ramani was not immediately reachable for comment.

Shutapa Paul, who also accused Akbar of harassing her, said if the minister “has any moral responsibility he should step down”.

“I am mulling all options. Truth and justice shall prevail,” Paul told Al Jazeera.

Akbar, 67, a veteran editor who founded several publications, has been accused of a range of inappropriate behaviour by female journalists who previously worked as his subordinates.

Many journalists have called for Akbar to be sacked and have threatened to boycott events he is attending until he resigns.

The government pf Prime Minister Narendra Modi has remained silent on the issue for days, while Akbar was attending a conference in Nigeria.

He returned to New Delhi on Sunday morning to find a crowd of reporters waiting outside his residence.

“This doesn’t impose any confidence in the government’s seriousness in addressing a very grave issue,” Geeta Seshu, member of the Network of Women and Media told Al Jazeera.

“On the one hand, this government professes a commitment to womens’ rights and to the girl child. And on the other, it allows a minister against whom such shocking allegations have been made to continue in office and represent it in international fora,” she added.

Akbar said he plans to fight the allegations and questioned if they were politically motivated.

“Akbar, being a minister, the misuse of his powers in the pursuit of any legal action he contemplates is highly possible,” Seshu said.

“In the interests of an independent investigation and to ensure real justice for the courageous women who have come out to speak up, he should be told to step down till his name is cleared.” 

#MeToo in India

Akbar is one of the highest-profile figures so far to face accusations in India’s burgeoning #MeToo movement.

The movement, which began in the United States to amplify accusations of sexual harassment and abuse by powerful men in media and entertainment over a year ago, has picked up pace in India in the past few weeks after a Bollywood actress accused a colleague of inappropriate behaviour on the set of a film they were shooting in 2008.

Since then, over a dozen men from media, entertainment and the art world have been accused of offences ranging from sexual harassment to rape. Several media organisations have sacked or sent employees on leave in recent days after a string of similar allegations.

In the latest allegation to surface against Akbar, Majlie de Puy Kamp, a New York-based journalist, said Akbar molested her when she was an 18-year-old intern at his newspaper Asian Age in New Delhi in 2007.

“What he did was disgusting, he violated my boundaries, betrayed my trust,” de Puy Kamp told the news website Huffington Post India.

My story seems to be a tiny drop in a disgusting ocean — I can only hope sharing them will finally make a difference. #MeToo Thank you @Amannama & @betwasharma https://t.co/dCNYRR4vgM

— Majlie de Puy Kamp (@MajliedePuyKamp) October 12, 2018

Kavita Krishnan, an activist at the All India Progressive Women’s Association said this is also a failure of the Modi government. 

“MJ Akbar’s refusal to resign and his move to intimidate his victims with defamation cases is a slap on the face of all women – not by Akbar alone but by the Modi government too. This is Modi’s version of Trump’s Kavanaugh move,” activist Krishnan said. 

But these are not the only accusations, complaints have appeared all over social media from men and women alike.

My account of what happened at beginning of my career.. https://t.co/8lHvPmdW33

— Saba Naqvi (@_sabanaqvi) October 10, 2018

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Seething with rage this morning as I read my college mate & dear friend @RuthsDavid account of how @mjakbar harassed her when she was interning as a teenager at the Asian Age. Can’t believe she didn’t tell us this back in college. #MeTooIndia #TimesUp https://t.co/s7CHfrsU3i

— Rahul Kanwal (@rahulkanwal) October 14, 2018

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First allegation against MJ Akbar surfaced on 8th October. Since then, there are innumerable accounts of his predatory behaviour. It is 13th October today. He’s still a Minister. Still representing India. #BetiBachao

— Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) October 13, 2018

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Friends are asking me whether I’ve any personal vendetta against Akbar. None. I am horrified by what Ive read now and heard in the past. That’s all. https://t.co/cofcKEX3pn

— Ravi Shankar (@etteth) October 14, 2018

India’s main opposition Congress party has demanded Akbar’s resignation, while Maneka Gandhi, the minister for women and child development, has called for an investigation into the allegations against Akbar.

Additional reporting by Zeenat Saberin from New Delhi

Two New Zealand activists have raised thousands of dollars through crowdfunding after an Israeli court fined them for their role in singer Lorde cancelling her show in Tel Aviv, but they plan to donate the money to Gaza Mental Health Foundation instead.

Justine Sachs and Nadia Abu Shanab on Friday rejected the legal action which ordered them to pay over $12,000 in damages for causing mental harm to three Israeli teenagers who had purchased tickets to the concert.

The duo turned to a crowdfunding website raising nearly $23,000 by Monday.

The defendants wrote on Friday on fundraising website Give A Little that they had no intention of complying with the Israeli ruling.

“We will not be paying the court ordered amount. Instead, we would like to redirect the support extended to us back to Palestinians in need of mental health support,” they wrote, adding that the money would go to the Gaza Mental Health Foundation.

“Emotional distress is a lived reality for Palestinians in Gaza, where over half of children suffer PTSD as a result of Israeli military attacks,” the activists wrote.

Emotional distress is a lived reality for Palestinians in Gaza, where over half of children suffer PTSD as a result of Israeli attacks.

We are inspired always by Palestinians in their pursuit of basic human dignity.

Please donate at: https://t.co/qR5gRht4pX

— j (@_unfortunate1) October 12, 2018

These two young women are fantastic. Human rights allies deserve respect and solidarity. Please donate to their fundraising efforts for a good cause. (I lived and worked in Gaza in 1999. The situation was appalling then. The suffering is worse now). https://t.co/i1FIJA3Nu3

— Pav Akhtar (@pav_akhtar) October 15, 2018

Abu Shanab of Palestinian descent told NZ Radio that the pair were not prepared for the amount of international attention they would receive.

She said the pair had been “struck with a sense of responsibility”.

“Israel has chosen to make an example of us,” Abu Shanab said. 

The lawsuit, filed in January, is the first ruling to cite a controversial 2011 Israeli anti-boycott law that allows civil action against entities who call for a boycott of the state as part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Activists behind the BDS movement say it is inspired by the campaign that targeted South Africa‘s apartheid regime.

“Playing in Tel Aviv will be seen as giving support to the policies of the Israeli government, even if you make no comment on the political situation,” the activists wrote in their letter to Lorde in December.

The singer responded on Twitter, saying the concerns had been “Noted!”

Days later, the 21-year-old New Zealander cancelled the performance which was due to conclude her Melodrama world tour, saying she “didn’t make the right call” in her initial willingness to sing in Tel Aviv.

Israel sees BDS as a strategic threat and accuses it of anti-Semitism – a claim activists firmly deny, calling it an attempt to discredit them.

Artists who have participated in the cultural boycott of Israel through the Palestinian-led BDS movement include Brian Eno and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, writers Arundhati Roy and Eduardo Galeano and film-maker Ken Loach.

A group of European Parliament (EP) employees has launched a website to highlight sexual harassment experienced by staffers of the political body.

MeTooEP.com, referring to the global #MeToo movement, is a response to an alleged lack of action to combat sexual harassment by the parliamentary institution of the European Union.

“This website would not have been necessary if victims felt comfortable to go through the tools of the institution,” Pia Micallef, media coordinator for MeTooEP, told Al Jazeera.

“If people felt comfortable, we would have never had to create this website.” 

The website comes a year after Jeanne Ponte, a parliamentary assistant, went to the media with a notebook containing testimonies of 80 EP staffers alleging abuse – both women and men – collected over five years.

It led to an immediate response from the EP, which adopted a resolution against sexual harassment detailing several steps to root it out at the highest echelons of European politics.

However, despite its rapid adoption, the measures were not implemented, say members of MeTooEP.

The group’s website has been launched to share the claims more publicly, as it calls on others working for the EP to come forward anonymously.

“Currently, when an assistant comes forward and speaks about his or her experience, they are faced with a committee that has three MEPs, a doctor and a psychologist on it,” Macillef said.

“But those last two don’t have a vote with regards to the verification of the harassment claim, while the three MEPs do.”

For any non-political EP employee that comes forward with a complaint, a similar committee is set up, but in those cases, the doctor and psychologist do have a vote on what happens next.

According to Macillef, this has created the feeling among political staff that their experiences are less important. 

“The fact that there are two committees, because of certain political issues, is understandable. But the fact that the doctor and psychologist do not have a vote on that committee is not,” she said.

“It creates fear, and when you create fear that means you don’t have the proper structures in place for victims to come forward.”

“The time my colleague took candid photographs of me” read full anonymous testimonials on https://t.co/GuBRbFTUqe #MeTooEP #MeToo #TimesUP #ShareYourStory pic.twitter.com/Rzsaj5t8ym

— MeTooEP (@MeTooEP) October 10, 2018

The allegations on MeTooEP.com currently range from lewd comments made during working hours and receiving inappropriate text messages to physical harassment.

For now, only stories from Ponte’s original file of 80 stories have been posted – with the victims’ permission.

But Micallef said that during the first couple of days, a lot of people contacted the team with their own stories.

“In the coming days, our testimonials will become increasingly more difficult to read, with detailed and very grave situations in the EP, with some being so bad that we are considering to warn people within the bloc that leadership discussion might be advised,” Micallef said.

However, she wants to make clear that the website is not specifically made to publicly out those accused of harassment.

“The site allows people to come forward, but it also has tools that victims can use. Contact lists, places people can go to when they are a victim, both internal and external,” she said.

“We are not here to name and shame.”

“The time he offered to warm me up” read full anonymous testimony at https://t.co/GuBRbFTUqe #MeTooEP #MeToo #TimesUp #ShareYourStory pic.twitter.com/UY81rV3H4S

— MeTooEP (@MeTooEP) October 13, 2018

Besides resources, the site also focuses on three specific points in the resolution that have not yet been adopted by the EP: Creating a task force of independent experts to assess sexual harassment cases, making doctors and psychologists full members of the harassment committees and making sexual harassment training mandatory.

“Currently, what has been proposed is that it will be mandatory for everyone except the MEP,” Micallef said.

“That is ridiculous, because those are the people with the highest concentration of power. And at the end of the day, sexual harassment is about the abuse of power.

“When we speak to people about sexual harassment, many find that for example what might be sexual harassment to one person might not be sexual harassment to someone else

“This misconception, about what is sexual harassment and what is not, is very important to address that through training.”

At the end of the day, sexual harassment is about the abuse of power.

Pia Micallef, MeTooEP.com

But according to EP spokesperson Marjory van den Broeke, mandatory training in this manner is impossible to implement at the moment.

“As MEPs are freely elected, it is not possible to impose mandatory training, but MEPs are strongly encouraged to take such training,” Van den Broeke told Al Jazeera via email.

She also said the EP had undertaken several other steps to combat sexual harassment over the last year, citing an external audit currently being conducted.

“MEPs will also need to sign a declaration that they will respect the code of conduct on harassment if they want to have an institutional role,” she added. 

“Penalties will be levied against MEPs found guilty of harassment and those will be publicly announced.”