FB, Instagram, Twitter remove migrant rape video

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 23 - 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. (ANSA).