'Cleaning the Minorities': Throwing Water at Refugees and Foreign Workers Suspends Lebanese Tiktok Account

A Lebanese Tiktok account created as early as February 2020 has been suspended after social media users reported its racist content against migrant workers in the country.

The account nicknamed "elemenet19v2" and has a KKK costume profile picture, referring to the American white supremacy group Ku Klux Klan associated with lynching African Americans during the late 19th century and early 20th century.

In six different videos, the user's voice can be heard mostly laughing at migrant workers as he passes by them and throws water at them.

Several of his videos are captioned with anti-minority and anti-refugee sentiments, such as "Cleaning the minorities," "refugees are not welcome," and "me and the anti-minorities gang back at it."

Even though the account was suspended by Tiktok, Lebanese social media users took to Twitter to stand against his racist actions. Many commentators also mentioned the official account of Lebanese security forces calling on them to take action against him.

A few hours later, Lebanese journalist Luna Safwan, who posted several of his videos reporting the act to official authorities, tweeted that one of the offender's cousins contacted her to say that "he's only 15 years old and was only trying to have fun while feeling bored."

The relative demanded Safwan "to not see racism in everything" especially that "not everything that concerns non-white people is racist." The message also added that "his actions were not illegal."