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British Police Investigate Twitter Account Twitter Removes Anti-Semitic Postings, French Jewish Group Says
(about 7 hours later)
A day after Twitter blocked users in Germany from access to the account of an outlawed neo-Nazi group, the police in Britain plunged on Friday into a separate inquiry relating to remarks purportedly made on Twitter by a right-wing political leader about a legal case concerning discrimination against a gay couple refused accommodation by the owners of a lodging house. PARIS — Hours after Twitter blocked access to the account of an outlawed neo-Nazi group to users in Germany, the company agreed to remove anti-Semitic Twitter posts that were proliferating in France under the hashtag #unbonjuif, or “a good Jew,” a French Jewish group announced on Friday.
British news reports said the Twitter account at the center of the investigation — @nickgriffinmep — had been suspended after it was used to publish the couple’s address and call for a demonstration there. It later appeared to have been reactivated without the couple’s address, but it was not immediately clear who had ordered the editing. The agreement was announced by lawyers for the Union of Jewish Students of France, who had a conference call with Twitter representatives in California on Thursday evening. The posts had produced increasing criticism and outrage over the last week from the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France and from SOS Racisme, a lobbying group that decried a “wave of feverish hatred.” Some of the posts had been removed as of Friday evening.
The account is listed on Twitter as “the official Twitter page of British National Party Chairman and Member of the European Parliament for the North West region, Nick Griffin.” The anti-Semitic posts sometimes included photos from the Holocaust and a variety of jokes. There were also anti-Muslim posts. The student union had threatened to get an injunction under French law, which prohibits discrimination based on religion, ethnicity or race, one of its lawyers, Stéphane Lilti, told French news agencies.
The party is a small and xenophobic group that has made some electoral gains in recent years, culminating in Mr. Griffin’s election to the European Parliament in 2009. The group campaigned on a platform opposed to what Mr. Griffin calls the “creeping Islamification” of Britain and supporting voluntary repatriation of immigrants and a British exit from the European Union and NATO. Several Twitter users posting on the hashtag criticized the decision to delete the anti-Semitic posts, calling it censorship. A user calling himself Andre said: “Better to educate than censure. Shame on you Twitter.” Another questioned who would decide which posts were anti-Semitic and which were not.
The legal case that stirred the dispute related to Michael Black and John Morgan, who won damages of 1,800 pounds (roughly $2,300) each on Thursday after complaining that the owner of a bed-and-breakfast refused to give them a room with a double bed when they arrived in March 2010. They had reserved a double room by e-mail and paid a deposit. Asked for comment, Twitter referred The Times to its standard policy statement: “Twitter does not mediate content. If we are alerted to content that may be in violation of our terms of service, we will investigate each report and respond according to the policies and procedures outlined in our support pages.”
The owner, Susanne Wilkinson, said her Christian beliefs prevented her from providing double beds to unmarried couples. No one at Twitter would talk on the record about the French posts, but it has its own criteria for regulating content and will sometimes suspend an individual account or withhold individual posts.
But the court concluded that, by refusing a double bed for Mr. Black and Mr. Morgan, Ms. Wilkinson “treated them less favorably than she would treat unmarried heterosexual couples in the same circumstances.” In Germany on Thursday, Twitter applied for the first time a policy known as “country-withheld content,” which allows it to block an account at the request of state authorities. The neo-Nazi group had been banned by the government of Lower Saxony.
The apparently edited messages posted on the @nickgriffinmep Twitter account said “bit of drama by way of reminding you that an English couple’s home is their castle. Say No to heterophobia!” and “. .for rights of all homeowners, gays included, to rent or not rent rooms to whomsoever they wish.” In the French case, the student union said it was providing Twitter with a longer list of what it considered particularly offensive posts using the same hashtag. Jewish groups in France have cited an increasing number of anti-Semitic episodes since a French Muslim, Mohammed Merah, who claimed to be allied with Al Qaeda but was apparently acting alone, murdered seven people, including four Jews, in Toulouse in March.
Initially, the messages, posted on Thursday, had threatened to send a “British justice team” to the couple’s address. “We salute the decision of Twitter to respond to our request and promptly remove racist and anti-Semitic Tweets,” said the president of the student union, Jonathan Hayoun. He said the union still intended to file a complaint against the company, which has refused to identify the people behind the posts.
A spokeswoman for the police in Cambridgeshire said: “We have received a number of calls in relation to the tweets and are looking into the complaints we have received.” Two other cases involving Twitter created news this week. On Friday in Britain, police were investigating remarks that appeared on the Twitter account of a right-wing political leader about a case of discrimination against a gay couple who were refused accommodation by the owners of a lodging house.
“Officers will also visit the men mentioned in the tweets as part of our inquiries” she said, adding that one of the messages on Twitter had revealed their home address. The police were reported later to be patrolling near the couple’s home. British news reports said the account — @nickgriffinmep — had been suspended after it was used to publish the couple’s address and call for a demonstration there. It later appeared to have been reactivated without the couple’s address.
Mr. Griffin reacted angrily to the affair saying in a BBC interview that discrimination was “a fundamental human right.” The account belongs to Nick Griffin, the British National Party chairman and a member of the European Parliament. The party is a small, xenophobic group that has made electoral gains in recent years, culminating in Mr. Griffin’s election to the European Parliament in 2009. The party campaigned on a platform opposed to what Mr. Griffin calls the “creeping Islamification” of Britain, supporting the voluntary repatriation of immigrants, and calling for Britain to quit the European Union and NATO.
“Mr. Black and Mr. Morgan have the right to decide who enters their home and who doesn’t, as do Christians, and that’s what they are taking away,” he said. In Germany, Twitter blocked access to the neo-Nazi Twitter account for users in Germany under a policy known as “country-withheld content,” announced in January, in which it will block an account at the request of a government. Mr. Griffin reacted angrily to the lodging house case, telling the BBC that discrimination was “a fundamental human right” and that the owners of the lodging house had the right to decide who could enter their home.
The company said the goal was to balance freedom of expression with compliance with local laws. “Never want to withhold content; good to have tools to do it narrowly & transparently,” Alexander Macgillivray, the company’s chief lawyer, wrote on Twitter. And at a hearing in Istanbul on Thursday, a Turkish pianist and composer, Fazil Say, 42, denied charges of insulting religion after he cited a thousand-year-old poem on his Twitter account. The case was adjourned for four months.
A German spokesman for the company confirmed in an e-mail that it was the first time the policy had been used, although Twitter does not as a matter of policy announce government requests to block an account. In April, Mr. Say reposted a verse in which the 11th-century Persian poet Omar Khayyam mocks pious hypocrisy. His case is an indication, critics say, of an increasing distortion of justice by a more conservative interpretation of Islam promoted by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The authorities in Lower Saxony banned the neo-Nazi group, Besseres Hannover, or Better Hanover, last month. Twitter has said that its goal is to balance freedom of expression with compliance with local laws.