Maram Susli, also known as Partisangirl, is a Syrian living in Perth, Australia. If you ask the British government, though, shes a Russian bot. London bases these claims on dodgy numbers from shady sources, Susli tells RT.
“Last time I checked, Im a real human being,” said Susli. “The British government, they cant even confirm that Im not an automaton. How can we believe anything they have to say about the evidence they have for Skripal and Syrias chemical attacks?”
Suslis twitter handle, @Partisangirl, was referenced in a number of UK media outlets, who uncritically cited a British government analysis of alleged Russian-operated bot accounts. Partisangirl supposedly reached 61 million users with 2,300 posts over a 12-day period.
“Ive only posted 900 tweets in 30 days,” Susli told RT, adding that the false number cited in the report comes from Ben Nimmo, head of the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab). “Hes obviously been fudging these numbers, because thats not what my analytics show.”
The Atlantic Council is funded in part by the Syria Campaign, the same outfit that is behind the so-called White Helmets, Susli said, and therefore has a vested interest in attacking anyone who brings up the connection between the White Helmets and Al-Qaeda.
Another member of the DFRLab is Eliot Higgins, also known as Bellingcat. As a chemist, Susli challenged Higginss armchair analysis of the 2013 alleged gas attack in Syria, and says that hes had a vendetta against her ever since.
“Theyre fudging numbers, they have personal vendettas, they have no credibility. And these are the people [UK Prime Minister] Theresa May is using as evidence to suggest that Im automated,” Susli told RT.
They could have stopped and realised the fact they attacked all the anti-war voices at once looked suspicious. But nope, they're still going. They had it all pre-planned out. https://t.co/LoohS7GWgj
— Partisangirl
(@Partisangirl) April 23, 2018
Moreover, she is only one of the people being targeted by UK media outlets over the weekend; the others include several independent journalists and academics.
“Its clearly a smear campaign to try to intimidate people into silence and to try to smear anti-war activists as somewhat a biased voice related to Russia somehow,” Susli said.
This is not the first time Susli has faced attacks from the media, but this is the first time a government has become involved.
“Unfortunately, these are dangerous times, these are times of war. Were heading closer to perhaps worse than the Cold War was. So I expect things to get worse,” Susli told RT. “Ive seen the censorship. My Facebook account has been shut down. They tried to shut down my YouTube account. Im not sure how long Im going to be staying online, but Im going to continue as long as I can.”
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