New Zealand woman says police were searching for her because of her Facebook post ‘Welcome to New India’.
Renee-Rose Schwenke, a New Zealand woman, has claimed that after she posted a picture on Facebook with the caption ‘Welcome to New India’, police knocked on her door and accused her of racist attitudes. It was a picture of her with two Indian looking men in the background. But the post was a jibe at Prime Minister Christopher Luxon who recently signed a free trade agreement with India. The post read, “Welcome to New India, thanks to Laxsingh”.Schwenke said the Facebook post, which she does not consider racist, was flooded with derogatory comments from Indians and the post was eventually reported to police, who tracked it down.He wrote, “The police called me in relation to my ‘racist’ post. This was not to threaten or incite violence. I was called to the police station by a senior sergeant to tell me that my post was cruel and ‘racist’, which was unwelcome to the Indian community.”“He had to walk away from us twice because he was being pushy because of his personal views and couldn’t handle a little pushback and the truth instead of behaving as a professional. This is what happens when you live under the soft tyranny of angry people. I will not silence my views to accommodate your feelings.”The woman also shared a recording of a female policeman calling her mother, who was looking for her, in connection with her social media post. The policeman said they were planning to come to her house “in relation to some posts that she was putting online, which people basically didn’t take that well, so they have made some complaints to the police”.“I regularly receive death threats for my views and beliefs, I’ve been called every kind of racist, transphobic, Islamophobic name but somehow I’m wrong. This world is upside downGood is now evil and evil is now good,” the woman doubled down.Schwenke re-shared his post and said: “If you’re offended by this, I’m not singling you out. This is nothing personal, not every lion is about you. No to the mass immigration invasion!”