Website Calling for Attacking Pride Parade Closed

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The Facebook page created by group calling itself “Muslim Anatolian Youth” in order to call for an attack on the Pride Parade in İstanbul  has been closed.

The group had created an event on Facebook with the title “We won’t let dishonourable perverts march”. The page also included expressions such as “On the 19th transvestites will march and on the 26th all LGBTI perverts will march”.

Facebook users who had reported the page earlier had received the response “We have examined the event you have mentioned and spotted that it did not violate our Community Standards”.

While LGBTI activists were getting organized to report Facebook Turkey to the administrative center of Facebook, the event was removed by Facebook itself.

Elif Avcı from Pride Week Committee talking to bianet has criticized that Facebook did not find the page which was obviously based on pointing LGBTI persons as targets, and Attorney Levent Pişkin has noted that they would file a criminal complaint against the group although the page was closed and added; “This is actually not a crime depending on being reported and the prosecutors are supposed to launch a legal investigation themselves but they don’t. That’s why we are going to file a criminal complaint on charges of ‘pointing as a target, threatening, insult, inciting people to hatred and hostility as well as restraining democratic peoples. (ÇT/DG)