Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has faced social media backlash after a tweet in which she referred to the Nazi hate symbol Hakenkreuz (“hooked cross”) as the Swastika, a religious symbol for the Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jain communities.
The Premier has now deleted her tweet after hundreds of the Hindu, Jain and Buddhist community members expressed their disappointment over her misrepresentation.
The deleted tweet clearly misrepresents the Nazi hate symbol Hakenkreuz as Swastika.
Premier Palaszczuk also posted on her Facebook account the same unacceptable terms about the religious symbol of Swastika.
However, after community backlash, she first added a reply saying…
“We will consult further with the legal community and others and introduce a bill in the second half of this year.”
Which angered the community more.
Perhaps it was not the best start of the morning for Premier and her media team.
The next reply came almost an hour and a half after the original post which tried to control some damage caused to public perception of Premier Palaszczuk. It is also clear from her reply that Ms Palaszczuk is aware of what the Swastika means for many communities living in Australia.
This update had little respite for Premier and her team.
The Hindu and the Jewish communities in Australia have been working together to clear this misrepresentation. The Victorian Parliament has recently introduced legislation to ban Nazi symbols including the Hakenkreuz. The legislation clearly makes a distinction between the Hakenkreuz and the Swastika.
Well known Academic Sarah L Gates wrote an open letter to the Premier of Queensland following her now-deleted tweet,
After all the morning corrections and deletion, this is what her edited Facebook post looks like.
However, you can still see what Premier Palaszczuk wrote about Swastika by clicking the view edit history option on Facebook.
