The head of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s office, Janos Lazar, recently posted an anti-immigrant campaign video that depicted white Austrians as living in fear of Muslim immigrants.
The video was removed from Facebook on Wednesday but then later reinstated by Facebook.
Facebook policy forbids comments that attack people based on their racial, ethnic or religious identity Bloomberg Quint reported.
The anti-immigrant video served as a warning to the Hungarian electorate ahead of parliamentary elections on April 8.
“Thank you, Facebook, for the correct and quick action,” Lazar said in a Facebook post, Bloomberg reported.
Lazar had accused Facebook of censorship when blocking the video.
The video displays Lazar in a run-down Viennese neighborhood as he blames the poor and lowly conditions on immigrants from the Middle East. However, Vienna has been on top of the Mercer consultancy’s global quality-of-living ranking for eight years in a row, something Lazar did not mention in the video.
In a plea for votes, Lazar claimed that immigrants are taking over the neighborhoods and schools.
“People use Facebook to challenge ideas and raise awareness about important issues, but we will remove content that violates our Community Standards, including hate speech. Exceptions are sometimes made if content is newsworthy, significant or important to the public interest,” Facebook said in a statement after reinstating the video.
“Bewildered and shocked” and a “sad example of xenophobia,” tweeted city councilor Renate Brauner, Bloomberg reported.
The video was “inappropriate,” the junior coalition party that backs anti-immigrant policies said in a statement, Bloomberg said.
Orban’s cabinet has been accused of racism and of disregarding its legal obligations toward refugees and civil society by United Nations agencies.
