Twitter Censors Ex-PM Mohamad for Remarks on French

Twitter on Thursday deleted a tweet by former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad in which he said: “Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.” The tweet had been posted earlier in the day as part of a global Muslim backlash against French President Emmanuel Macron, who, following the October 16 beheading near Paris of a teacher who had displayed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad as part of a lesson on freedom of speech, condemned extreme Islam. It was removed following Thursday’s beheading of a woman in a French cathedral, and the killing of two others, by a man shouting “Allahu akbar.” The post was just one of a series tweeted on Thursday by Mohamad. It was the only one removed after Twitter initially labeled it with a disclaimer saying it violated the social media platform’s rules. Cédric O, France’s Secretary of State for Digital Media, says he contacted Twitter demanding that it suspend Mohamad’s account. “I just spoke with the managing director of Twitter France. The account of former Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad must be immediately suspended. If not, Twitter would be an accomplice to a formal call for murder,” O said in a tweet of his own. (O is the junior minister’s full last name.) The Media Line ascertained that the ex-prime minister’s account was active at the time of this posting.