Tarrant
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FILE PHOTO: Actor Jussie Smollett makes a court appearance at the Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., March 14, 2019. E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/Pool via REUTERS
April 5, 2019
By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Chicago will sue Jussie Smollett for the costs of police overtime spent investigating the actor’s claims that he was the victim of a hate crime, which prosecutors say were false, a city lawyer said on Thursday.
Attorney Bill McCaffrey said the lawsuit was being prepared after Smollett, 36, refused to reimburse Chicago $130,000 after Cook County prosecutors dropped the charges.
Smollett, who is black and gay, touched off a social media fire storm by telling police on Jan. 29 that two apparent supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump struck him, put a noose around his neck and poured bleach over him.
But the actor, best known for his role as a gay musician on the Fox Television hip-hop drama “Empire,” was charged in February with staging the incident himself and filing a false police report.
Last week prosecutors dropped all charges against Smollett, infuriating police and outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The case file was sealed by a Chicago judge, which critics suggested was evidence of a cover-up.
The actor’s criminal defense attorney, Mark Geragos, could not be reached for comment.
On Monday, some 300 people, including off-duty Chicago police officers, took to the streets to protest, calling on Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to resign over her handling of the case.
Foxx, who recused herself from the case before charges were filed, citing conversations she had with one of his relatives, has defended her actions and those of her prosecutors.
Smollett was written out of the final two episodes of “Empire” this season after he was charged with staging the hate crime. Fox executives have not said if he will return should the show be renewed for another year.
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; editing by Bill Tarrant and Lisa Shumaker)
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People visit a memorial site for victims of the shooting, in front of Christchurch Botanic Gardens in Christchurch, New Zealand March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
April 4, 2019
By Praveen Menon
CHRISTCHURCH (Reuters) – Australian Brenton Tarrant will appear in court in New Zealand on Friday, where the suspected white supremacist faces more charges after his arrest for mass shootings at two mosques last month that killed 50 worshippers and wounded dozens.
In an attack broadcast live on Facebook, a lone gunman armed with semi-automatic weapons targeted Muslims attending Friday prayers in Christchurch on March 15.
Tarrant has been moved to New Zealand’s only maximum security prison in Auckland and will appear at the Christchurch High Court through a video link at 1000 a.m. (2100 GMT).
Tarrant, 28, was charged with one murder the day after the attack and remanded without a plea. Police said they would bring 49 more murder charges and 39 attempted murder charges against Tarrant when he appears in court.
Prison officials say Tarrant is under 24-hour surveillance with no access to media, according to news reports.
Friday’s appearance will largely be procedural and Tarrant will not be required to enter a plea, a High Court judge said in court minutes this week.
Tarrant declined a court appointed lawyer and media said he wants to represent himself.
Legal experts have said Tarrant may try to use the hearings as a platform to present his ideology and beliefs.
Although journalists may attend and take notes, media coverage will be restricted. Judge Cameron Mander said media could only publish pixellated images of Tarrant that obscure his face.
‘ALL HUMANS’
The massacre, which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern labeled terrorism, was New Zealand’s worst peacetime mass killing.
Dozens of representatives from around the world joined a national memorial service last week attended by Ardern and tens of thousands of New Zealanders.
Muslims worldwide have praised New Zealand’s response to the massacre, with many singling out Ardern’s gesture of wearing a headscarf to meet victim’s families and urging the country to unite with the call, “We are one.”
Thousands of visitors to the reopened Al Noor mosque, where 42 people were killed, have offered condolences and sought to learn more about Islam, said Israfil Hossain, who recites the daily call to prayer there.
“They are coming from far just to say sorry…although they never did anything to us,” said Hossain, 26.
On Thursday, a group of Carmelite nuns stood for the first time inside a mosque, holding back tears as they talked with worshippers about the two faiths.
“Everybody has their own problems and they have their own ideas about religions, and that’s fine, and we should all have that, we’re all different,” said one nun, Sister Dorothea.
“But we’re all humans and that’s the most important thing, our humanity.”
(Reporting by Praveen Menon; editing by Darren Schuettler)
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FILE PHOTO – Flowers and signs are seen at a memorial site for victims of the mosque shootings, at the Botanic Gardens in Christchurch, New Zealand, March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Edgar Su
April 4, 2019
By Byron Kaye and Tom Allard
SYDNEY (Reuters) – From its clubhouses in Melbourne and Sydney, the Lads Society promotes drug-free living and exercise, as well as “white resistance” and Islamophobia, according to online statements and interviews with two of its leaders.
One of Australia’s most high profile extremist groups, its members last year infiltrated the youth arm of the National Party, part of the ruling coalition government, before being exposed and ejected due to their far right views.
Now, the group has come to prominence again – and to the attention of security agencies – after a gunman shot 50 people dead at two New Zealand mosques.
In the hours after the shootings, the Lads Society’s private Facebook page lit up as its members discussed the attack and the man arrested and charged with murder, 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant, according to five screenshots of the Facebook messages which were provided by a person with access to the group and reviewed by Reuters.
“He had been on the scene for a while,” said Tom Sewell, founder of the Lads Society, according to the previously undisclosed messages on the Lads Society’s Facebook page.
“He made heaps on Bitcoin and paid for his own holidays, I spoke to him back in 2017 when he was donating money to everyone,” added Sewell.
In a later public statement, Sewell said he and Lads Society leaders were interviewed about the Christchurch attacks by the Australia Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the country’s domestic spy agency.
ASIO said it does not comment on specific individuals, intelligence or operational matters but was alert to the threat from people with “extreme right-wing ideologies”. The Australian Federal Police also declined to comment when asked about any ties Tarrant had to the Lads Society.
Sewell declined to comment on Tarrant or whether he knew him, and his messages provided no further details.
Tarrant, who is now in custody and has said he plans to represent himself, was not available for comment.
The Lads Society’s page was shut down after Facebook targeted white nationalists in the wake of the Christchurch massacre. Reuters was unable to verify the claims on the since-deleted Facebook page.
However, Sewell’s messages to the private group on the Lads Society Facebook page, which carried the same profile photo as a photo posted on Sewell’s Instagram account, add to evidence Tarrant was engaged with Australia’s far right.
On the 8Chan message board minutes before the attack, Tarrant posted links to a livestream video of the attack and said: “You are all top blokes and the best bunch of cobbers a man could ask for.” Cobber is Australian slang for friend, and a term popular among Australian white nationalists.
As Australia confronts the uncomfortable truth that Tarrant was one of its own, the country has been gripped by acrimonious debate about both its past race policies and whether recent political discourse about immigration and Islam had any role to play in his radicalisation.
In the space of a few minutes outside a Sydney mosque the day after the Christchurch shootings, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison encapsulated the country’s contradictory identity.
“We are a tolerant, multicultural society, the most successful immigration country on the planet,” he said, before pivoting to a darker undercurrent. “These white supremacist, white separatist views, are not new. I mean, these sentiments have sadly existed in Australia for hundreds of years.”
OFF THE RADAR
Tarrant grew up in the small Australian city of Grafton, where he worked as a gym instructor and developed a passion for gaming and computers, according to local media reports citing the gym owner and his grandmother.
In a “manifesto” distributed online just before the attack, Tarrant said he formed his racist beliefs on the internet and downplayed his links to Australia, saying he was radicalised abroad.
He acted alone, the manifesto said, although he said he had donated to far-right groups from an inheritance and a cryptocurrency windfall.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz last week confirmed his country’s far-right Identitarian Movement had received 1,500 euros ($1,690) from Tarrant.
Most of his past nine years was spent traveling across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Tarrant was “on nobody’s radar, anywhere,” said Morrison, spending only 45 days in the past three years in Australia.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, citing archives of the deleted Facebook account of the United Patriots Front (UPF), another Australian far-right group, Tarrant described one of that group’s leaders, Blair Cottrell, as “Emperor”. Reuters was unable to independently verify that detail.
Cottrell – a muscle-bound, blond-haired carpenter – founded the UPF alongside Sewell. Sewell later started Lads Society in 2017, with Cottrell’s promotional support. Cottrell, described by sources as the movement’s main figurehead in Australia, still heads UPF and appears in Lads Society photos and videos but holds no formal position in that group.
Cottrell told Reuters that, as best he could tell, Tarrant had donated only once to groups he was associated with – A$50 to the UPF.
“I don’t believe I influenced Tarrant much at all. Maybe three years ago, he was in support of our specific opposition to that mosque development in Bendigo.”
In 2017, Cottrell and two other UPF members were found guilty of inciting contempt of Muslims after they filmed a mock beheading outside council offices to protest a mosque development in the small Victorian city.
GOING MAINSTREAM
White extremists gained momentum in 2014 after an Islamist gunman took a group of hostages in a Sydney cafe, analysts and members of the movement say.
The following year, thousands of people attended rallies arranged by anti-Islam group Reclaim Australia, and some far-right politicians spoke at the events.
Suspicions about the presence of Lads Society members in the youth wing of the National Party first emerged after officials of the rural-based party noted an influx of new members from cities.
After ties to the Lads Society were revealed in local media, the National Party expelled 19 people, saying in a statement in November it “would not rest until every last one of these extremists have been identified and removed.”
In Australia’s latest census, about 90 percent nominated their ancestry as Australian or European, while 2.5 percent were recorded as Muslims.
Just under a quarter of Australians have a “negative attitude” to Muslims, according to a 2018 report from the Scanlon Foundation, a group that tracks social cohesion.
FAR-RIGHT SENATOR
In the wake of the Christchurch attacks, Australia’s Islamophobes flooded social media with memes and messages in support of Fraser Anning, the Australian senator who blamed the bloodshed on “an immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand”.
In an interview with Reuters, Anning said he was “completely opposed” to the attacks in Christchurch.
However, he echoed the “replacement theory” embraced by Tarrant and the global white supremacist movement. Muslims, he said, “are going to outbreed us very quickly”.
Anning has picked up 28,600 Facebook followers in the past four weeks, data provided by his office shows, and now has more than 122,000 followers.
Sewell and Cottrell in statements and interviews with Reuters and other media, also said they were appalled by the attacks on the mosques.
“Politically motivated violence is not in the interest of our organization or our community,” Sewell said in his since-deleted Facebook statement on March 20.
In his interview with Reuters, Sewell said further that Tarrant’s violence had caused governments to become “extremely reactionary”, passing legislation “without thinking it through”.
New Zealand moved swiftly to ban the kinds of semi-automatic weapons used in the attacks.
“We have a new level of totalitarian thought crime legislation across New Zealand and shortly here in Australia too,” Sewell added.
(Reporting by Byron Kaye, Tom Allard and Jonathan Barrett. Editing by John Chalmers and Lincoln Feast.)
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Flowers and cards are seen at the memorial site for the victims of Friday’s shooting, outside Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Edgar Su
April 4, 2019
SYDNEY (Reuters) – The Australian man accused of killing 50 Muslim worshippers in gun attacks on two mosques in Christchurch will face 50 murder charges and 39 attempted murder charges, New Zealand police said on Thursday.
“Other charges are still under consideration,” police said in a statement.
Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was previously charged with only one murder following the attack and has been remanded without a plea.
He is due back in court on Friday. The March 15 attack was the worst mass shooting by a lone gunman in New Zealand.
(Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
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FILE PHOTO: Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of Facebook logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
April 4, 2019
By Colin Packham
CANBERRA (Reuters) – Australia will fine social media companies up to 10 percent of their annual global turnover and imprison executives for up to three years if violent content is not removed “expeditiously” under a new law passed by the country’s parliament on Thursday.
The new law is in response to a lone gunman attack on two mosques in Christchurch on March 15, killing 50 people as they attended Friday prayers.
The gunman broadcasted his attack live on Facebook and it was widely shared for over an hour before being removed, a timeframe Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison described as unacceptable.
Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, has been charged with one murder following the attack and was remanded without a plea. He is due back in court on April 5, when police said he was likely to face more charges.
It is now an offence in Australia for companies, such as Facebook Inc and Alphabet’s Google, which owns YouTube, not to remove any videos or photographs that show murder, torture or rape without delay.
Companies must also inform Australian police within a “reasonable” timeframe.
“It is important that we make a very clear statement to social media companies that we expect their behavior to change,” Mitch Fifield, Australia’s minister for communications and the arts, told reporters in Canberra.
Juries will decide whether companies have complied with the timetable.
A spokeswoman for Google declined to comment on the legislation specifically, but said the company has already taken action to limit violent content on its platforms.
A spokeswoman for Facebook was not immediately able for comment.
Facebook said last week it was exploring restrictions on who can access their live video-streaming service, depending on factors such as previous violations of the site’s community standards.
Australia’s opposition Labor party backed the legislation, but said it will consult with the technology industry over possible amendments if it wins power at an election due in May.
Australia’s parliament will rise until after the election. The newly elected lawmakers will not sit until at least July.
Critics of the legislation said the government moved too quickly, without proper consultation and consideration.
“Laws formulated as a knee-jerk reaction to a tragic event do not necessarily equate to good legislation and can have myriad unintended consequences,” said Arthur Moses, head of the Australian Law Council.
(Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Michael Perry)
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FILE PHOTO: The Weeknd performs at the Global Citizen Festival concert in Central Park in New York City, New York, U.S., September 29, 2018. REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
April 4, 2019
(Reuters) – Canadian singer The Weeknd has been sued by three British songwriters over allegations he copied their work to produce his hit “A Lonely Night,” according to U.S. court documents.
Songwriters William Smith, Brian Clover and Scott McCulloch sued the Weeknd, Universal Music Group Inc and others in a Los Angeles federal court. The song in question appears on The Weeknd’s Grammy-award winning album “Starboy.”
The British songwriters heard “I Need to Love,” recognizing it as their song “A Lonely Night,” the lawsuit said.
The UK songwriters are seeking unspecified damages.
They edited the two songs together in a sound clip https://youtu.be/y-WCCWWYsj0 they said showed the similarities.
Joel Zimmerman, who is listed as an agent for The Weeknd, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit said that in 2004 and 2005, the British artists pitched their song to various artists around the world. A division of Universal Music bought the rights to the song in 2008, the court document said.
In 2016, the songwriters were told by the label that the song had not been used and it was relinquishing all rights to their work, according to the lawsuit.
Two weeks later, The Weeknd and Universal released “Starboy.” Last year, The Weeknd was sued with an allegation that his song “Starboy” from the album of the same name, was a rip-off.
(Reporting By Andrew Hay in New Mexico; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Grant McCool)
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FILE PHOTO: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jared Polis speaks at his midterm election night party in Denver, Colorado U.S. November 6, 2018. REUTERS/Evan Semon
April 3, 2019
By Keith Coffman
DENVER (Reuters) – Colorado lawmakers approved a bill on Wednesday overhauling regulations governing the state’s robust oil and gas industry to prioritize public health and safety, over opposition by Republicans and industry groups.
Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, is expected to sign the bill passed by majority Democrats, into law.
The controversial measure, which proponents say is the most sweeping changes to regulations in energy-rich Colorado in decades, would give local communities more oversight over development in their jurisdictions.
The legislation requires the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which oversees the industry, to hire a full-time staff of experts who will evaluate drilling impacts to air quality, among other controls.
The bill’s sponsor, Democratic state Senator Steve Fenberg, said in a statement that the revamped regulations were “long overdue.”
“This bill will ensure that public health and safety are the top priority in regulating oil and gas development in Colorado, and will empower local governments with the tools they need to address the concerns of their individual communities,” Fenberg said.
Colorado ranks as the fifth-biggest state in the nation in crude oil production and sixth in natural gas production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The Colorado Oil and Gas Association, an industry group which opposed the bill, last month released a study it commissioned that said oil and gas production employs 89,000 people and pours $1 billion in tax revenues to state and local government coffers.
The association said new rules could jeopardize what it called an “economic juggernaut.” The association said in a joint statement with the Colorado Petroleum Council after the bill’s passage that despite some amendments to the original bill that allayed some of the industry’s concerns, it still opposes the measure.
“State officials have committed to working with industry experts during the highly complex regulatory rulemakings following the bill’s enactment,” the statement said. “That will be critical to minimizing the bill’s negative impacts on our state, and we hope that process can begin immediately.”
Environmental groups that pushed the legislation hailed its passage.
“Coloradans can breathe easier today knowing that our state is finally on track to put the health and safety of workers and residents, and our environment ahead of oil and gas industry profits,” Kelly Nordini, executive director of Conservation Colorado, said in a statement.
(Reporting by Keith Coffman; editing by Bill Tarrant and Leslie Adler)
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FILE PHOTO: Two Saudi men take a selfie at Saudi Arabia’s first commercial movie theater in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia April 18, 2018. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser
April 3, 2019
By Lisa Richwine
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Theater operator AMC Entertainment Holdings is forging ahead with its expansion in Saudi Arabia, Chief Executive Adam Aron told Reuters, after a journalist’s killing six months ago clouded the future of the kingdom’s newly opened cinema market.
Aron said his company reconsidered its plans to open dozens of theaters, which the company announced last spring, following the October murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate. The killing sparked an international outcry.
The CIA and some Western countries suspect Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing just over six months ago. Saudi authorities vehemently deny he was involved.
“It certainly made us think in great depth,” Aron said in an interview this week in Las Vegas at CinemaCon, an annual convention for theater owners.
“What we concluded at AMC is that if we continued with the opening of theaters in the Middle East, that we were doing something very good for the people of the country,” he said. “And we decided that what was in the best interest of the people was the right course of action for us.”
AMC, the biggest cinema chain in the United States and the world, is working on the theaters through a partnership with Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF).
John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners, said on Tuesday that at least three theater chains were moving forward with plans to add screens in Saudi Arabia. He declined to name the companies.
Fithian told reporters the killing of Khashoggi was “a tragic, awful human rights violation”, but added: “I don’t think it’s our business to make foreign policy as a trade association.”
“The idea of having the freedom to see movies in a country … can only help to open up thinking in that country,” he said. “Movies have always been a sword for freedom.”
The Saudi government communications office did not immediately respond to a request to comment.
A year ago, Saudi Arabia lifted a nearly four-decade ban on cinemas. AMC screened the first film, Walt Disney Co’s superhero hit “Black Panther”, at a movie house in Riyadh, and other companies announced plans to operate theaters in the country.
But shortly after Khashoggi’s killing, cinema chain Vue International put on hold plans to open as many as 30 locations in Saudi Arabia, Chief Executive Officer Tim Richards told The Guardian newspaper at the time.
Hollywood talent agency and media company Endeavor also returned a $400 million investment to the Saudi Arabian government to protest the killing.
Aron said his company had a “significant number” of theaters under lease in Saudi Arabia and many will open in 2019. He also expects to have “50 theaters open four to five years from now”.
The AMC theater in Riyadh has shown dozens of films over the past year, he added.
“The theater has been immensely popular,” he said, “as you would expect in a city of 7 million people that now has two movies theaters, in a country that likes movies and saw movies frequently, just not in theaters.”
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Sonya Hepinstall and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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Mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot clinches her fists as she speaks during her election night celebration after defeating her challenger Toni Preckwinkle in a runoff election in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., April 2, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Lott
April 3, 2019
By Brendan O’Brien
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Chicago, known for its machine politics and corruption, woke up Wednesday to voters choosing an anti-establishment candidate who may shake up a city that made history by electing its first African-American woman for mayor.
Voters in the third-largest U.S. city on Tuesday elected Lori Lightfoot, who has never held office, in a runoff election. She easily defeated long-time local politician and a fellow black woman, Toni Preckwinkle, 72, to become the city’s 56th mayor.
Chicago has now become the largest American city to elect a black woman as its mayor, and an openly gay woman as well.
The 56-year-old Lightfoot is also the latest in a wave of political newcomers to win major elections around the globe as voters upend the status quo, propelling anti-establishment candidates to power. She will now take over a city where politics is a blood sport and where corruption has swirled in and around City Hall for generations.
But Chicagoans are ready for a change, Lightfoot said on the campaign trail, promising to support mayoral term limits, reforms that would ban elected officials from profiting from their governmental positions and strengthen worker compensation oversight.
“They want a break from the corrupt political machine that has held back the aspirations of so many people,” Lightfoot said during a debate last week. “They want a government that is responsive to them and that has integrity.”
The city got its reputation as a well-oiled political machine from the way Richard J. Daley, one of the last big-city “bosses,” ran the city from 1955 to 1976 with help from armies of patronage workers and crooked city council members.
Thirteen years later, his son Richard M. Daley became mayor and for the next 22 years, he ran the city as the powerful political machinery churned in the background.
“It’s refreshing to see somebody who is different, hopefully,” said Andrew Tabor, 61, a consultant who has lived in Chicago his entire life.
Tabor recalled an incident from “years ago” when the so-called machine allegedly sent a message to a childhood friend’s father who had political connections.
“They blew up his car. I don’t know who he was not playing nice with, but someone blew up his car. That’s the machine right there,” Tabor said sitting in the living room of his home on the north side days before the historic vote.
NOT PROGRESSIVE ENOUGH?
Lightfoot has held several positions in and out of government. She was an assistant United States attorney, a senior equity partner at Mayer Brown LLP and, most notably, the president of the Chicago Police Board, an independent civilian panel.
Some on the left, including Preckwinkle, criticized her as not being progressive enough, noting she made millions as a corporate lawyer representing corporate clients.
She and Preckwinckle earned spots on the runoff ballot after they garnered the most votes among 14 candidates, including Richard M. Daley’s younger brother Bill, in a February election. Lightfoot will replace Rahm Emanuel, who announced in September he was not seeking a third term as mayor.
Voters saw Lightfoot as the anti-establishment choice compared with Preckwinkle, who was a city council member, or alderman, for almost 20 years before becoming Cook County board president in 2010.
“Lightfoot will bring more change because Preckwinkle is connected to the old-boys club, the establishment,” said retired mailman Gary Muckle, 77, after voting for Lightfoot this weekend at a polling place on the city’s north side.
“We will have to see what happens now. Lightfoot is not beholden to anyone,” he said.
Lightfoot will also face a raft of thorny problems such as reforms to the police department, rampant gangs and violent crime and a spiraling budget deficit fueled by escalating pensions.
Emanuel leaves as corruption continues to seep throughout city hall. Just this year, Alderman Ed Burke, a long-time political powerhouse in Chicago, was charged with extortion, Alderman Willie Cochran pleaded guilty to wire fraud and it was revealed Alderman Danny Solis was recently under investigation for corruption.
Burke, who has been an alderman for 50 years, won re-election in February.
In all, federal prosecutors racked up 246 public corruption convictions in the Northern Illinois District, which includes Chicago, from 2010 to 2017. That is 80 percent more than in the Southern District of New York, located in Manhattan, according to a report from the Department of Political Science at University of Illinois at Chicago.
“The race turned on reform of Chicago politics and moving towards a new Chicago,” said Dick Simpson, a professor in the department, who studies Chicago politics, noting that 33 city council members have gone to jail over the last four decades.
“There seems to be a desire to make reforms so that the continuing pattern of corruption … would change permanently,” said Simpson, a former city council member.
(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; editing by Bill Tarrant and Lisa Shumaker)
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FILE PHOTO – Senator Fraser Anning speaks during a news conference in Brisbane, Australia, March 18, 2019. AAP Image/Dan Peled/via REUTERS
April 3, 2019
Sydney (Reuters) – Australia’s Senate censured an independent right-wing lawmaker on Wednesday for his comments that New Zealand’s mosques shooting massacre which left 50 people dead was a result of letting “Muslim fanatics” migrate to the country.
Senator Fraser Anning has been widely condemned for his comments made shortly after a lone gunman attacked two mosques in Christchurch on March 15.
“There is no room for racism in Australia. Sadly, what Senator Anning said after the Christchurch massacre, however shocking isn’t out of character,” Australian Muslim Senator Mehreen Faruqi told the Senate.
“Just a week before I joined this place, he gave a speech calling for a ban on people like me coming to this country.”
Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, has been charged with one murder following the attack and was remanded without a plea. He is due back in court on April 5, when police said he was likely to face more charges.
Sitting for the first time since the attack, Australia’s upper house overwhelmingly passed a censure motion against Anning – the first such public rebuke of a lawmaker in four years. A censure motion has no direct legal consequences but acts as an expression of the Senate’s disapproval.
Senator Anning denied he had blamed the victims, insisting the censure was an attack on his civil liberties.
“This censure motion against me is a blatant attack on free speech,” Anning told Reuters via email.
Leaders of the major parties in the Senate condemned Anning’s comments, with opposition Labor Senator Penny Wong rejecting his “free speech” defense.
“There is a difference between freedom of speech and hate speech. The former is a feature of our democracy. The latter is an attack on democracy,” Wong said.
“This motion makes it clear he doesn’t speak for us. He doesn’t speak for the Senate. He doesn’t speak for this nation. He doesn’t represent Australian values.”
Anning’s comments gained international attention after footage of a teenager smashing an egg on the head of the right-wing senator was widely shared on social media.
(Reporting by Alison Bevege; Writing by Colin Packham; Editing by Michael Perry)
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