‘KILL the Mayor of London’: Sadiq Khan reads racist tweets

SADIQ Khan has revealed some of the most shocking, racist and violent social media messages he has received since taking office.

LONDON Mayor Sadiq Khan has shared a sample of the death threats and racist abuse he regularly receives on Twitter in a bid to raise awareness of cyber bullying and harassment.

Speaking at the South by Southwest technology conference in Texas, Mr Khan, who is a practising Muslim with a British Pakistani background, told the audience he was regularly attacked due to his religion and ethnicity.

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He read out six shocking tweets he had received, and urged social media companies to crack down on hate speech spread on their platforms.

The tweets shared by Mr Khan included:

Deport all muslims and make london white again, all problems will be gone

— /mas/ (@MemAuSe) August 6, 2017

@SadiqKhan is just a gay muzzie terrorist. https://t.co/r7H1T3rURn

— Geralt (@warprivia) September 15, 2017

Twitter user Emmanuel Maris, whose account has since been suspended, tweeted: “Muslims have no dignity. I wish Sadiq Khan would just blow himself up like they all do. He might get his 12 virgins”, while another posted: “Muslims need to be shot or hanged! The mayor is doing nothing about attacks.”

Mr Khan also shared a further two tweets that included death threats, with @billwall69 writing: “I say kill the Mayor of London and you will be rid of one Muslim” and @SpeedwagonPRST tweeting: “I’d pay for someone to execute Sadiq Khan.”

According to The Independent, Mr Khan used his speech to highlight how damaging online hate speech and racism was for minorities, especially children.

“I don’t read these out to be portrayed as a victim, or to ask for sympathy,” he said.

“But ask yourself this — what happens when young boys and girls from minority backgrounds see this kind of thing on their timelines — or experience it themselves?

“And what about young girls and women who are being driven from these platforms — reversing our long fight for gender equality?”

The mayor also slammed British politicians for their failure to act on technological regulation, saying governments were “sitting on their hands while the tech revolution has happened around them” The Guardian reported

He continued: “There’s been a dereliction of duty on the part of politicians and policymakers to ensure that the rapid growth in technology is utilised and steered in a direction that benefits us all.”

He said social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter needed to toughen up on hate speech.

“No business or industry should ever consider itself above the local rules, or laws set by democratic processes,” Mr Khan said. “Social media platforms already have a legal obligation to remove content that breaks local laws. But this is not always happening, or happening quickly enough.

“With the skills and resources these companies have at their disposal — I believe it’s possible to go further and faster.”

Mr Khan, a member of the Labour Party, has served as London mayor since 2016.

He is London’s first ethnic minority mayor, and the first Muslim to become the mayor of a major Western capital city.

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