The afd is outraged about the temporary suspension of its member of parliament beatrix von storch on twitter. The news service had suspended the deputy leader of the parliamentary group for twelve hours because of a comment about muslim men.
Your party speaks of "censorship. Von storch had been upset on twitter that the colonn police had published her pit and information on new year’s eve not only in german, french and english, but also in arabic.
She wrote: "what the hell is going on in this country?? Why is an official police website from north rhine-westphalia tweeting in arabic?. Do they mean to besanftigen the barbaric, muslim, gang-raping hordes of men like this?"Twitter then blocked her account for twelve hours, citing a "violation of rules about hate content.".
Because of the tweet, the afd politician was reported dozens of times for possible incitement of the people – the colonn public prosecutor’s office estimates the criminal charges at several hundred. Calls have been received from all over germany from authorities asking for the file number under which the reports are being collected, senior public prosecutor ulf willuhn told the deutsche presse-agentur on tuesday. He did not want to commit himself to an exact figure. First you have to get an overview of the situation. The police in colonia had also filed a complaint.
However, it remains to be seen whether an initial suspicion exists. The next possible step would be a criminal investigation. However, the immunity of the deputies had to be lifted first, explained willuhn.
The police in colonia were surprised that their tweet had made such a big impact. New year’s eve 2016 was also broadcast in arabic, among other languages, a spokeswoman said. That the authorities would file charges themselves was decided by the state security service at the state criminal investigation office.
Afd chairman alexander gauland sees freedom of speech in danger. With regard to the new law of the federal minister of justice against hate speech on the internet he said: " the censorship law of heiko maas already shows its freedom-curbing effect on the first day of the new year. These stasi methods remind me of the GDR."
The party leader himself is not active on facebook and twitter. However, he called on all social media users to publish von storch’s deleted comment "over and over again". The second afd chairman, jorg meuthen, told the "stuttgarter zeitung" and the "stuttgarter nachrichten" (wednesday) about von storchs tweet: "this is not a hate post. This is of course very strong language, but the statement is covered by the freedom of opinion."
On twitter von storchs objected entry was already on monday no longer readable. However, the politician published a screenshot of it on facebook – and repeated her twitter statement there with the addition "let’s see if it’s allowed to say that on facebook".
The afd faction leader alice weidel wrote on twitter: "the year begins with the censorship law and the submission of our authorities to the imported, marauding, grabbing, beating, knife stabbing migrant mobs to which we should get used to."This entry was later blocked by the service for germany.
Late on monday evening, von storch announced via her twitter account, which was then accessible again, that facebook had also blocked her message with the original content that was once again disseminated there. She showed a screenshot of the reason: "we have blocked access to the content for the following reason: incitement of the people (paragraph 130 of the german penal code)."
The since 1. January’s network enforcement law requires services such as facebook, twitter or youtube to delete clearly criminal content within 24 hours of a tip-off. In less clear-cut cases, they have a week to respond. The operators of the social networks are threatened with heavy fines.
The online services did not initially provide any concrete information about the procedures used to remove the missing contributions. In the case of the stork tweet, twitter’s standard procedure was to ask the author to delete the content after a user report and to refrain from publishing any further messages from her for twelve hours. According to an afd spokesman, von storch did not delete the offending tweet on his own.
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