Independent – by Lizzie Dearden
At least 54 people have been detained by police in France for “defending or glorifying terrorism” in the wake of last week’s attacks in Paris.
Many of the arrests are believed to stem from comments made on Facebook, Twitter and social media as the world reacted to the atrocities.
They are part of a broader French crackdown on perceived hate speech, extremism and anti-Semitism amid a government push for tougher anti-terrorism measures.
Anti-semitic French comedian Dieudonné was among those detained after he seemed compared himself to the gunman who murdered four people at a kosher supermarket, Amedy Coulibaly.
Dieudonné M’Bala M’bala, 48, who was being held for questioning at a Paris police station, could face possible charges of “apology for terrorism”.
Roger Cukierman, President of the CRIF (Representative Council of France’s Jewish Associations) said Twitter was ‘collaborating with criminals’ by allowing tweets defending terrorism Paris state prosecutors had opened a formal investigation on Monday night into remarks made by the comedian on his Facebook page after the vast “Republican march” in Paris.
After mocking the media coverage of the rally, the comedian declared: “As for me, I feel I am Charlie Coulibaly”.
A tweet sent from an official French police account had asked people to report Twitter users who were endorsing the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the BBC reported.
A spokesperson for the French government said some of the people arrested have already been convicted of the offence.
While the #jesuisCharlie hashtag became one of the most used in the site’s history, #jesuisKouachi, using the name of the brothers who carried out the Charlie Hebdo massacre, was tweeted thousands of times.
The president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Associations, Roger Cukierman, argued that Twitter should have censored the tweets as young people are now “educated” through social networks.
“How can we accept that Twitter is accepting such messages, they are collaborating with criminals. It should be subject to penal law,” he told Sky News.
While some of the #jesuisKouachi posts appeared to express admiration for the Kouachi brothers and condoned their massacre, a far greater number seemed to be discussing the trend or expressing outrage at its existence.
Several people called for those using the hashtag to be arrested or even tracked down and killed by a drone strike.
Others used it as an example of freedom of speech, demonstrating that people’s instinct to censor something held to be offensive contradicted the liberal values professed in the wake of the terror attacks.
Additional reporting by AP
So much for freedom of speech in enlightened Europe. You’re free to speak as long as that speech meets the prescribed criteria of no criticism of Israel, jews, the Holocaust, or government support of same. Charlie HebDo was a disgusting little political porn magazine on the verge of bankruptcy until this incident. Now within a week they suddenly have the staff and means to publish millions of copies for world wide distribusion wheras prior to this debacle they could barely push 50k copies. One may ask how this was possible?
Thanks joos! That’s how 😉
More crap being published to help condition you to the process of ending free speech here.
Read the Bill of Rights instead of the news, and prepare to defend it. The French can deal with their own tyranny. WE have to deal with ours.