TV host Kruger vilified Muslims
TELEVISION host Sonia Kruger vilified Muslims when she called for Australia to ban immigrants of the Islamic faith on air, a tribunal has found.
The Channel 9 presenter launched a “stereotypical attack on all Muslims in Australia” on Today in July 2016, but it was not racial vilification because Muslim people are not a race, the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal ruled yesterday.
Ms Kruger said there was a correlation between the number of Muslims in a country and the number of terrorist attacks, adding the Federal Government should close Australia’s border because she wanted to feel “safe” on Australia Day.
Australian Muslim Sam Ekermawi filed a complaint to the tribunal for what Ms Kruger later admitted was an “extreme” view.
Ms Kruger’s “vilifying remarks” could “encourage hatred towards, or serious contempt for, Australian Muslims by ordinary members of the Australian population”, the tribunal found. But it dismissed Mr Ekermawi’s racial vilifi- cation complaint, stating Muslims living in Australia were technically not “a ‘race’ by reason of a common ethnic or ethno-religious origin”.
“Apart from that issue, we would have found [Kruger and the Nine Network] engaged in racial vilification,” it said.
The tribunal noted the host had “made it clear she did not think every Muslim in Australia or overseas was a fanatic”.
“She expressed the view that the size of Australia’s Muslim population meant there should be no further Muslim migration irrespective of any other matter,” the tribunal said. “This appears to be unsupported by any evidence.”
While noting the remarks were without malice, it said she could have expressed them in a more measured manner. “She could have referred to the need for Australia to engage in greater security checking of people wishing to migrate… who may happen to be Muslims and the need to prevent a drift towards radicalisation amongst Muslims currently in Australia, rather than simply stating that 500,000 Muslims represents an unacceptable safety risk which justifies stopping all Muslim migration.”