Afghan leader condemns Labor for failing to delete “racist” comments about Liberal candidate for Bruce

A prominent Melbourne Afghan leader has condemned Labor for failing to a delete a slew of “abhorrent” Facebook comments labelling the Liberal candidate for Bruce a “terrorist” and accusing his family of being “suicide bombers”.

A prominent Melbourne Afghan leader and lawyer has condemned Labor for failing to a delete a slew of “racist” online comments labelling the Liberal candidate for Bruce a “terrorist” and accusing his family of being “suicide bombers”.

Afghan candidate Zahid Safi has been the target of a series of comments on Labor MP Julian Hill’s social media posts comparing him to Osama bin Laden and claiming he is linked to the Taliban.

Afghan community leader Massi Ahmadzay, who lives in the multicultural outer southeastern Melbourne electorate, defended Mr Safi on Friday, telling the Herald Sun the accusations were “rubbish” and “completely unwarranted”.

“Zahid is a very decent, hard working Australian – a proud Aussie,” he said.

“As an Afghan Australian and a lawyer reading those comments, those vitriolic comments … it shakes me to my core.

“It’s abhorrent, and it doesn’t belong on social media.”

Mr Safi has been the target of a series of comments on Labor MP Julian Hill’s social media posts. Picture: Supplied

He called on Mr Hill’s team to delete the comments and commit to better moderating.

“If you permit that sought of material as a third party and you don’t do anything to moderate it may lead to legal implications,” he warned.

A Labor Party spokesperson said Mr Hill’s team were working hard to moderate comments and had deleted hundreds of inappropriate remarks directed at Mr Safi.

Many of the comments, Mr Ahmadzay said, were coming from a “small minority in the Hazara community” who were targeting him over a 2021 submission Mr Safi had made to a parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s involvement in the Afghanistan war.

Labor member for Bruce Julian Hill. Picture: Mick Tsikas

In the submission, Mr Safi had claimed that the Hazara community in Afghanistan was not persecuted due to ethnicity and incorrectly referenced a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, prompting accusations that he was peddling “racist tropes”.

Mr Ahmadzay denied that Mr Safi empathised with the Taliban, telling agitators in the community to “leave the ethnic and racial division back in Afghanistan.”

“There is no room for racism,” he said.

Liberal Party campaign spokesperson, Victorian Senator James Paterson, called on Mr Hill to “personally apologise to Zahid Safi”.

“No member of parliament should host comments racially vilifying their opponent on their social media pages,” he said.

“It is particularly appalling for the assistant minister for multicultural affairs to do so.”

Mr Hill told the Herald Sun he was “disappointed” by the comments and that his team has been working to remove them.

“I’m disappointed by some of the commentary that others are engaging in on my social media,” he said.

“My team constantly monitors my pages to delete inappropriate comments, and we have taken steps to ban comments with inflammatory keywords.”

Originally published as Afghan leader condemns Labor for failing to delete “racist” comments about Liberal candidate for Bruce