Update: March 21, 2019 – Christine Assange’s Twitter account has been restored.
Original article: Twitter blocked the account of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s mother, Christine Assange, on the grounds of ‘unusual activity.’ Christine has been using Twitter to campaign for her son’s liberty from quite some time The social media giant has blocked the account without citing any reason to do so. Christine has been prolific in her attempts to campaign for her son Julian.
“My Twitter account has been ‘blocked due to ‘unusual activity,” wrote Christine in a text message.
After being blocked by Twitter, Christine reached out to the Consortium News on Tuesday. As of now, any user can access her page by agreeing to view her profile, however, she is restricted from posting any tweets from her account.
She had posted 12 tweets in the past twenty-four hours and her last tweet was a retweet of an article on her son Julian. Christine had been posting several direct replies to US National Security Advisor John Bolton and Hillary Clinton.
“US military should use #Wikileaks for cyber warfare target practice. Take down their capabilities & prevent further harm to nat’l security,” tweeted Bolton on March 9th.
Christine’s reply to the above Tweet was removed and several other replies were made unavailable. She told that she began her reply to Bolton by calling his tweet ‘Fascist talk.’
Twitter is under immense pressure by the US Government to censor accounts and hide replies that are unfavorable or hostile to US interests. There are several algorithms employed by Twitter to filter profiles, restrict and block the accounts of its users.
Julian was granted political asylum by Ecuador seven years ago. However, the current government has made it clear to Julian that they want him to leave. He is restricted from contacting the outside world and on 28th of March 2018, Twitter had deleted Julian’s account too.
Ever since 2012, Julian has been a refugee in the Ecuador Embassy in London to avoid being arrested by the British authorities. He is guilty of skipping bail from an investigation by the Sweden government. Sweden later dropped the investigation and hasn’t charged Julian with any crime. Julian fears that he might be extradited to the USA if he leaves the embassy and will be convicted under the Espionage Act.
