Nigel Farage testified on Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, in which he urged Washington to persuade the UK government to put an end to the clampdown on free speech.
…
TRANSCRIPT
Nigel Farage: At what point did we become North Korea? We have a couple of very famous cases. We, of course have Lucy Connolly, who put out an intemperate tweet after the savage murder of those three beautiful young girls, she herself, a mother who had lost a child. It was intemperate, it was wrong, but she removed it three and a half hours later – sentenced to 31 months in prison!
She’s now out, having served 40% of the time. I wanted to bring her with me today as living proof of what can go wrong. Sadly, the restrictions that have been put on her banned her from making the trip, which is a very, very great shame.
And we, of course have the extraordinary events that we understood, yesterday of Graham Linehan, the comedy writer, comedic writer. And he put out some tweets months ago when he was in Arizona. And months later, he arrives at Heathrow airport to be met by five armed police – armed police, not a big deal in the USA – a very big deal in the United Kingdom – five of them! And he was arrested and taken away for questioning.
He’s not even a British citizen, he’s an Irish citizen! This could happen to any American man or woman that goes to Heathrow, that has said things online that the British government and British police don’t like!
It is a potentially big threat to tech bosses, to many, many others. This legislation we’ve got will damage trade between our countries, threaten Free Speech across the West, because of the knock-on, rollout effects of this legislation from us or from the European Union.
So I’ve come today as well to be a klaxon to say to you, “Don’t allow, piece by piece, this to happen, here in America.”
And you will be doing us and yourselves and all freedom-loving people a favor if your politicians and your businesses said to the British government: “You’ve simply got this wrong.”
At what point did we become North Korea? Well, I think the Irish comedy writer found that out, two days ago at Heathrow Airport. This is a genuinely worrying, concerning and shocking situation.
And I thank you for the opportunity to come here, today.
Add comment