Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter on
Tuesday removed a video of a Guinean asylum seeker raping a
Ukrainian woman in Piacenza Monday, which had been
controversially re-posted by conservative leader Giorgia Meloni
in a post vowing to boost law and order in Italy if the centre
right takes power in elections next month.
The video of the 27-year-old man raping the 55-year-old woman
was shot by a man in an overlooking window in the northern city,
who had been told by police not to intervene but to keep filming
evidence of the crime.
Meloni was widely criticised for allegedly electioneering in
re-publishing the video, with centre left Democratic Party (PD)
leader Enrico Letta calling the episode "indecent" and saying
the victim had been turned into an election football.
Brothers of Italy (FdI) leader Meloni retorted that the
indecency lay in the rape and not her posting the video.
After removing the video, Twitter said it had breached its
rules.
Facebook parent company Meta said it had broken norms relating
to the sexual exploitation of adults.
FdI Senator and bigwig Ignazio la Russa said politicians like
Letta who "got indignant at Meloni rather than at the rape are
looking at the finger rather than the moon."
He said "they are doing so, perhaps, to hide the lack of
interventions by the left on clandestine immigration, often (but
not always) at the origin of this full blown emergency from
which women are suffering".
Meloni's chief ally, League leader Matteo Salvini, has often
publicised cases of migrant crime, especially the most serious
ones.
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