<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/aug/31/australians-missing-in-nepal-targeted-by-heartbreaking-and-abhorrent-racist-slurs>
"A slew of racist social media comments have been made towards Australians
missing in the catastrophic Nepal-Tibet floods, prompting calls for greater
accountability of major platforms to remove hateful rhetoric.
On Monday, the total number of Australians missing after flash floods triggered
by a massive glacier collapse in the Himalayas rose to 43, and the overall
death toll was at least 810 people.
Most of the missing Australians were on pilgrimages, including to Mount Kailash
in Tibet, which is a sacred site for Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and followers of
the Bon faith. Fourteen are Sydney-based members of the Australia Bharatha
Brahmin Samaj community.
As families and friends face an agonising wait to learn the fate of their loved
ones, mainstream media outlets including News Corp, Channel 7, Channel 10 and
Nine have been hit with highly offensive and discriminatory comments on
Facebook articles identifying the missing Australians in Nepal.
Some outlets, including
Guardian Australia, have limited who can comment on
posts about the missing tourists after receiving strings of racist replies on
social media.
One
Daily Telegraph article received dozens of comments on Facebook from
people claiming that missing citizens who were not white weren’t Australian,
which were later deleted. One said: “Hoping we have new vacancies in Australia
that Aussies can fill.”
The outlet’s editor, Ben English, said the comments on the post were
“abhorrent” and “have no place on our platforms”.
“We are responsible for the comment threads on our pages and we take that
responsibility seriously … But no automated filter reliably catches racism
expressed in coded language,” he said.
“Where we cannot actively moderate a thread on a sensitive story, we will close
it – and we have moved to do that here.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
