DUBAI: Former beauty queen Shimaa Qasim broke into tears after she received a threatening message that said she “would be next” in the series of female deaths in Iraq, London daily Evening Standard reported.
Through a live video broadcast, Miss Iraq 2015 Shimaa Qasim said that she had received death threats four days after 22-year-old Instagram model Tara Fares was shot dead at the wheel of her Porsche by several unknown gunmen in Baghdad.
Fares, who sustained three fatal bullet wounds, was voted Baghdad’s beauty queen in 2013. With nearly three million Instagram followers, Fares was reportedly threatened on social media over her “lack of modesty” before her demise. Some have speculated that extremists were behind the shooting.
Her death came after the murder of female human rights activist Suad Al-Ali in the southern city of Basra. Ali was the head of Al-Weed Al-Alaiami For Human Rights, an NGO that focuses on the rights of women and children.
Some have gone online to express their sympathies to the recent victims, and human rights activists have said that the deaths were “threatening messages sent to activists in particular, but also to the whole of society.”
