Immediately following the stabbing incident at the Bondi Junction shopping mall in Sydney, Australia, various social media accounts started posting such posts that Muslim extremists were involved in the incident.
An unrelated person was identified as the suspect in connection with the incident. A mistake by a TV network led to the confusion.
As police were still in action at a Sydney shopping mall on Saturday, social media platforms were abuzz with speculation regarding the attacker’s identity and motives.
Police said on Sunday that they had no knowledge of whether Joel Kochi, the attacker from Queensland, was motivated by any particular ideology or belief. Despite this, attempts were made to prove that the attacker belonged to a particular religion or political ideology through misrepresentation on social media.
New South Wales Police Assistant Commissioner Anthony Cook said in a statement that “so far we have credible information and no concrete evidence that the attacker was affiliated with a particular religion or political ideology.”
British channel talk TV presenter Julia Hartley Brewer was told on the verified X account that the attacker was a Muslim terrorist. Julia later admitted her mistake. ‘Breton First’ co-founder Paul Golding’s X account said the same thing and the post was viewed millions of times.
The Australian Muslim Advocacy Network collected a sample of hateful content and comments related to the incident on Facebook. A spokesman for the network said the comments expressed “intense hatred towards Muslims”.
It should be remembered that the name of a Jewish youth, Benjamin Cohen, was also linked to the incident, to which the Jewish community of Australia has reacted strongly.
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2024-04-15 10:55:26
