1 Nov 2012

Racially abusive Facebook page shut down

8:54 pm on 1 November 2012

A Facebook page encouraging racial discrimination against Maori has been closed down following a string of complaints to the social network site and the Human Rights Commission.

The commission says the page was set up by two students at Inglewood High School in Taranaki and students from other schools.

Human Rights Commissioner Joris de Bres says it received five complaints about the page, which was created on Tuesday and attracted nearly 10,000 supporters.

Mr de Bres says there appears to be a trend among social networking site users to make up pages to incite racial discrimination.

"That's a bit of a worry when we see something like that can have that degree of instant popularity with a sector in our society.

"I think we just have to be mindful that there is a constituency in New Zealand for ... offensive racism."