French goverment calls on Twitter to suspend Mahathir Mohamad

Former Malaysian PM accused of inciting murder, just hours after the terrorist killing of three people in Nice.

‘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’: French Junior Minister for Digital Transition and Electronic Communication Cedric O. Picture: AFP

The French government has ­demanded Twitter suspend former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s social media account, accusing him of inciting murder for asserting that “Muslims had a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past”.

The incendiary remark was part of a series of 16 related Twitter posts uploaded on Thursday night under the title “Respect Others” to Dr Mahathir’s 1.3 million followers, two hours after a Muslim killed three people at a church in Nice.

“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,” France’s junior Digital Affairs Minister, Cedric O, tweeted early on Friday.

Twitter has since deleted the offending tweet, after first marking it as having violated its rules on glorifying violence.

I just spoke with the MD of @TwitterFrance. The account of @chedetofficial must be immediately suspended. If not, @twitter would be an accomplice to a formal call for murder.

— Cédric O (@cedric_o) October 29, 2020

The call to suspend Dr Mahathir’s account was backed on Friday by another former Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, who suggested comments posted by his 95-year-old political nemesis had been taken out of context but that “someone should take away all his social media accounts before he does more damage”.

In his Twitter thread, Dr Mahathir said he did not approve of the beheading by a young Muslim man earlier this month of French high school teacher Samuel Paty after he showed his students caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad during a discussion on free speech. “But irrespective of the ­religion professed, angry people kill. The French in the course of their history has killed millions of people. Many were Muslims.”

Dr Mahathir, prime minister of Muslim-majority Malaysia for 22 years from the early 1980s and again from 2018 until the collapse of his government last February, slammed French President Emmanuel Macron as “primitive” for declaring in response to Mr Paty’s murder that Islam was a religion in crisis.

Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on August 7. Picture: AFP

“Since you have blamed all Muslims and the Muslims’ religion for what was done by one angry person, the Muslims have a right to punish the French,” he wrote.

“The boycott cannot compensate the wrongs committed by the French all these years.

“Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past. But by and large the Muslims have not applied the ‘eye for an eye’ law. Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t. Instead the French should teach their people to respect other people’s feelings.”

The remarks have sparked a furious response, including from Scott Morrison who called them “absurd and abhorrent”.

“Of course (Muslims) don’t have that right. It’s just abhorrent to suggest anyone has such a right,” the Prime Minister said.

“The only thing that should be said today is to completely condemn those attacks. The only ­response is to be utterly, utterly devastated.”

Two women, aged 60 and 44, and a 55-year-old man were killed in Thursday’s knife attack, allegedly carried out by a 21-year-old Tunisian migrant who had recently entered France from Italy.

Local media reported that the younger woman was a Brazilian-born mother of three whose dying words were “Tell my children that I love them”.

Twitter initially marker Former Malaysia Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's tweet as 'glorifying violence' before later removing it from the website.

Australian ambassador to ­Malaysia Andrew Goledzinowski said he too was “deeply disturbed” by the veteran politician’s statement, while Australia’s former ambassador to France, Brendan Berne, labelled Dr Mahathir a “pious hypocrite” who did “not speak for all Muslims nor all ­Malaysians who love France”.

Dr Mahathir issued a rebuttal late on Friday saying he was “disgusted with attempts to misrepresent and take out of context what I wrote on my blog yesterday” and blamed “spin” for reports against him to Twitter and Facebook accusing him of promoting violence.

“There is nothing I can do about Facebook and Twitters decision to remove my posting. To my mind, since they are the purveyors of free speech, they must at least allow me to explain and defend my decision,” he said in a statement.

“On the one hand they defended those who chose to display offending caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and expect all Muslims to swallow it in the name of freedom of speech and expression.

“On the other they deleted deliberately that Muslims had never sought revenge for the injustice against them in the past.”

Dr Mahathir has previously questioned the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, and once said he was “glad to be labelled anti-Semitic”.

But his latest comments have ruffled few feathers in the Muslim world, which on Friday continued to focus on Mr Macron’s comments on Islam.

Since Mr Paty’s murder, the same images he showed his pupils have been widely displayed by French citizens and officials ­asserting their right to freedom of expression.

The government of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, issued a formal statement on Friday accusing Mr Macron of being “disrespectful towards Islam and the Muslim community worldwide”.

“Freedom of expression should not be exercised in ways that tarnish the honour, sanctity and ­sacredness of religious values and symbols,” the statement said.

A night earlier Indonesia’s foreign ministry tweeted its “deepest condolences” to the Nice victims and their families.