COMPLAINTS
The campaign’s complaints about and reporting of anti-religious hate speech in traditional and new media are detailed here.
LE SOIR’S HEADLINE DISCRIMINATES AGAINST CHINESE MUSLIM POPULATION
Trivialisation often goes hand in hand with discrimination, as is the case in an article by the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, in the article “China and its Muslims, a complicated relationship”.
Get the Trolls Out! Belgian partner European Network on Religion and Belief sent a letter of complaint to Le Soir, requesting the headline is changed. The phrasing “China and its Muslims” stigmatizes and denigrates the Chinese Muslim population, presenting them as a separate part of the country.
Amazon Advertises on Far-right Hate Figure Tommy Robinson’s Website
Tommy Robinson is a far-right, neo-fascist, white nationalist figure from the UK. As a result of a campaign by activists and British MPs, Robinson was banned from all major social media. In response, Robinson set up tr.news to promote his hateful worldview. Recently, tr.news published a banner to advertise Robinson’s book Enemy of the State, featuring the Amazon logo.
EUJS COMPLAINS AGAINST A XENOPHOBIC ALTERNATIVE NEWS OUTLET
Get the Trolls Out! Belgian partner EUJS sent a complaint letter to ReactNieuws.net, a blog that depicts migrants, particularly Muslim migrants, as dangerous criminals.
LICRA FILES LEGAL COMPLAINT AGAINST CHOUARD FOR HOLOCAUST DENIAL
Get the Trolls Out partner Licra and the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF) have filed a legal complaint against Yellow Vests activist Etienne Chouard for his antisemitic claims about the gas chambers.
Interviewed on the TV show “Cartes sur table” on “Le Media” online channel, Etienne Chouard, a teacher, blogger and well-known Yellow Vests political activist claimed to have no knowledge about the Holocaust and expressed some ambiguous doubts on the existence of the gas chambers.
MDI COMPLAINS TO PAYPAL ABOUT HOSTING FAR-RIGHT FIGURE KATIE HOPKINS
Get The Trolls Out! partner MDI (Media Diversity Institute) complained to PayPal after British media personality Katie Hopkins released a propaganda movie called “Homelands” in June. The film promotes anti-Muslim and xenophobic ideas, and pits the Jewish and Muslim communities against one another.
'CONSERVATIVE' GREEK DAILY BLAMES ISLAM FOR THE SRI LANKA ATTACKS
Following the Sri Lanka attacks on 21st of April, the Greek daily Dimokratia published a column stating its official position on these attacks the next day. The column targets Islam, claiming it is a "violent faith" which is "incompatible with democratic values and gender equality".
THE DAILY MAIL WRONGLY CLAIMS THAT MOHAMMED IS THE MOST POPULAR NAME IN BERLIN
The Daily Mail failed to recognise the Islamophobia and the inaccuracies in one of its articles, after the Media Diversity Institute (MDI) filed a complaint. The article, published on Mail Online on 3 May 2019, claimed that “Mohammed was the most popular first name for boys born in Berlin in 2018”, but a closer look at the results of the Society for the German Language (GfdS) study revealed that this is not accurate.
FAR-RIGHT FRENCH POLEMICIST SPREADS XENOPHOBIC HATE SPEECH ON TWITTER
French GTTO partner LICRA is planning on taking legal action against Renaud Camus based on a recent post on Twitter in which he shared extremely hateful xenophobic sentiments.
THE ARREST WARRANT AGAINST ALAIN SORAL SHOULD BE URGENTLY CARRIED OUT
Press Release of Anti-Racist Associations The undersigned anti-racist associations demand that the Prosecutor of the Republic urgently carry out the arrest warrant issued against Alain Soral on 15 April 2019 for publicly denying the Holocaust.
GREECE’S ELEFTHERI ORA CALLS THE GREEK PRESIDENT “THE TRAITOR IN… A KIPPAH”
On 28th January 2019, the extreme-right Greek newspaper Eleftheri Ora published a hate-filled front page accusing Prokopis Pavlopoulos, veteran centrist politician and current President of the Hellenic Republic, of being a “traitor in… a kippah.” The newspaper makes this accusation based on the president’s soft stand on the Prespa Agreement that put an end to the long-running dispute between Greece and Macedonia over the latter’s name.
FLEMISH OPINION SITE EQUATES ISLAM WITH TERRORISM
The European Union of Jewish Students wrote a complaint to Doorbraak, an opinion website, for the publication of an article explicitly blaming Islam for being a violent religion that poses security threats to Belgian society.
FRENCH DRIVING TEST REVISION PLATFORM USES ANTISEMITISM AS MARKETING STRATEGY
Code Express, a French online platform that offers driving licence courses, has refused to remove an antisemitic photo to promote their discounts, after GTTO partner in France, Licra, sent a complaint.
BELGIAN NEWS OUTLET LA LIBRE FOSTERS CATEGORISATION OF “GOOD AND BAD MUSLIMS”
A complaint by EFOMW requesting the Belgian news outlet La Libre to avoid dangerous simplifications when reporting on Muslims has been ignored by the editors. An opinion piece published in March has made widespread generalisations about what classifies as good Muslims and bad Muslims, creating misunderstandings that could lead to discrimination against those that the author sweepingly labels in a negative way.
AN ONLINE FRENCH-ENGLISH DICTIONARY, REVERSO LISTS EXTREMELY ANTI-SEMITICS TRANSLATIONS
Reverso is a free online French-English dictionary that claims to help its users gain a native-like understanding of these languages. To do this, Reverso provides examples of contextual sentence-use for each word in question. Shockingly, the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism (LICRA), GTTO partner in France, found that Reverso would often include violently Antisemitic examples...
THE EUROPEAN FORUM OF MUSLIM WOMEN DENOUNCE MEDIA COMPLICITY IN ‘THE DECATHLON CASE'
Following a campaign of vitriol and threats, Decathlon (a multinational sportswear retailer) announced their decision to remove running hijabs from their stores and website in France. The European Forum of Muslim Women (EFOMW), GTTO-partner in France, published an open letter denouncing social media and conventional publications for stigmatising Muslim women through sensationalist and hysterical coverage of the headscarf.