Police are investigating an online threat made against a feminist conference set to be held in Cardiff. The FiLiA Women's Rights Conference will arrive in the capital from October 22 until October 24 and claims to be the largest annual grassroots feminist conference in Europe.
Screenshots were widely circulated on social media of a conversation between two Twitter users, with one asking: "Is it in a building that would be a loss if it burnt down?" Both users' accounts have since been set to private mode.
A spokesperson for South Wales Police said: "We can confirm that the matter of an online threat has been reported to South Wales Police."
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The people making the alleged thread used the derogatory term "Terf" to describe the feminist group. Terf means "trans-exclusionary radical feminist".
FiLiA has previously responded to criticism of its support for women-only spaces. It has denied that FiLiA "work[s] to diminish the rights and recognition of trans women."
In a statement in July, the trustees said: "FiLiA is a women-led volunteer organisation which seeks to build sisterhood and solidarity, amplify the voices of women and defend women’s human rights. We organise the largest annual grassroots feminist conference in Europe, bringing together women from around the world who organise and campaign on a wide range of issues.
"FiLiA supports sex-based rights. There exist some situations in which women need access to female-only spaces: in refuges, in recovery from male violence, in shared accommodation, sports, and of course in the right of our lesbian sisters to determine their own sexual orientation. Our stance on this reflects the current state of the law.
"We support campaigns and projects which advance reproductive rights, work to end male violence against women and girls, celebrate lesbian lives, and challenge racism, classism, ableism, militarism and environmental destruction through feminism."
The event is set to feature speakers including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was reunited with her family in March following several years in an Iranian prison.
The annual FiLiA conference starts in Cardiff on October 22. The exact location of the conference, which was subject to the online threat, is not publicly known.
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