7 People Who Got Arrested for Social Media Posts Around the World

Breitbart:

As we contemplate the fallout from CNN’s effort to hunt down and intimidate the creator of a ten-second comedy video, let us note that people have been jailed around the world for social media posts.

Here is what happens when governments and cyber-vigilantes start deciding that certain “hateful” individuals no longer deserve the privilege of online anonymity. Note well how elastic the definition of “hate speech” can become in the hands of authoritarians.

Turkish Doctor Notices President Erdogan Looks Like Gollum: Dr. Bilgin Ciftci posted a photo collage comparing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, outraging the Erdogan government and Tolkien fans everywhere. Unlike Tolkien fans, Erdogan had the power to throw Ciftci in jail for his offense.

Insulting the president is considered actionable hate speech in Turkey, and not just in the “Obama rodeo clown” sense. Ciftci’s bid to escape an all-expenses-paid trip to the Mordor of Turkish prison hinged on arguing that Gollum is a tragic hero who finds redemption at the end of his story – followed moments later by incineration, but that is probably a detail the defense team did not linger upon.

A team of Lord of the Rings experts was brought in to assess the literary merits of the claim that comparing Erdogan to Gollum was not a felony insult. No less an expert than the director of the blockbuster Lord of the Rings films, Peter Jackson, chipped in by arguing that Erdogan’s Gollum-like facial expressions actually corresponded to the ruined hobbit’s “joyful, sweet” alter ego, Smeagol.

The defense also tried arguing that Erdogan was not actually the president when the controversial image was posted – he was merely prime minister at the time.

Dr. Ciftci, who lost his hospital job before the trial even began, was ultimately acquitted of the charges, avoiding a two-year jail sentence. However, another man who also compared Erdogan to Gollum, Rifat Cetin, was convicted for the same offense and given a one-year suspended prison sentence, accompanied by the loss of his parental rights. Ciftci and Cetin were among some 1,800 people accused by prosecutors of insulting Erdogan during his political career.

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