Facebook on Tuesday removed a
video of rightwing strongman Matteo Salvini ringing a doorbell
in an electoral stunt in Bologna and asking if a pusher lived
there.
Facebook said it had taken the video down due to a privacy
breach.
The video was removed at the request of the victim of the
stunt, 17-year-old Tunisian Yassin, whose surname has not been
released.
Surrounded by a film crew and a crowd of supporters,
nationalist League party leader Salvini rang the bell after a
woman who lost her son to drugs told him a pusher lived there.
Yassin has said he is not a pusher and that the woman was
irked at him because he and friends let off fireworks outside
her house.
The stunt, in the runup to regional elections which the
League lost on Sunday, was widely condemned and drew the ire of
Tunisia, whose ambassador protested.
Salvini has said he will apologise if the boy turns out not
to be a pusher.
Yassin's lawyer, anti-hate speech campaigner Cathy La Torre,
announced that the video had been removed from the social
network.
"Facebook has removed from Matteo Salvini's page the video of
shame," she said.
La Torre said she had asked for it to be removed because it
allegedly instigated race hatred.
Yassin, who has not been placed under investigation by
police, is suing Salvini.
In the Emilia Romagna elections, the League's Lucia
Bergonzoni lost by about eight points to the ruling centre-left
Democratic Party's (PD) incumbent Governor Stefano Bonaccini.
This was a blow to Salvini's hopes of exploiting a victory in
one of the staunchest leftwing strongholds to demand a change of
government in Rome.
The PD are in government with the anti-establishment 5-Star
Movement (M5S) and two smaller parties.
The Emilia Romagna victory has been seen as a boost for the
government despite the M5S vote crumbling and despite a defeat
to the centre right in the other regional elections on Sunday,
in Calabria.
Salvini, who has said a victory in Emilia has "only been
postponed", said he would do everything he did in the electoral
campaign again, including another stunt at a PD-run town hit by
a fostering scandal, Bibbiano.
In the aftermath of the Emilia Romagna win, former premier
Romano Prodi on Tuesday called on the PD to "open up" to other
civic forces like the Sardines, a grassroots movement which
sprang up in opposition to Salvini's populist and allegedly
rabble-rousing anti-migrant rhetoric.
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