The French teenager only identified by her first name, Mila, has received 50,000 death threats for criticizing Islam and currently lives under total protection and isolation, her lawyer, Richard Malka, said in an interview on Radio Monte Carlo (RMC).
“I am doing everything I can to say that she is within her rights and that her life is absolutely unbearable,” Malka said. “It has been going on for eight months, she received 50,000 death threats. The national prosecutor clearly stated that [Mila] did not overstep the limits of the law and justice, and she was only exercising her rights.”
“You can imagine how she is. Her life has changed. She is 17 years old. She is living like the people of Charlie Hebdo now, completely bunkerized, it’s unbearable,” he continued , referring to the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which has been the target of number of deadly terror attacks that have forced some of the magazine’s editorial board members to go into hiding and enter police protection.
Despite the tens of thousands of threats, Mila remains undeterred and posted another video critical of Islam on TikTok last week, which garnered a whole new surge of death threats.
“It seems that there is a new fashion which is to threaten to ‘make her into a Samuel Paty’. This is what kind of messages she receives along with images of severed heads,” detailed her lawyer. Samuel Paty was the French history teacher who was beheaded in Paris by an 18-year-old student of Chechen descent after Paty showed a cartoon of the Prophert Muhammad during a school lesson on freedom of expression.
Mila remains active online on Instagram and Twitter where shares her views, including her belief that the government pursues anti-French policies. She has also used social media as a platform to share the numerous threats she and other women receive. As Remix News reported earlier , Mila was first flooded with death threats after she criticized Islam earlier this year, calling it “a shitty religion”, prompting French authorities to place both her and her family under police protection.
“The Quran is a religion of hatred, there is only hatred in it. Islam is shit, your religion is shit,” said Mila on a popular French chatshow Le Quotidien, with a video of her nationally-televised talk going viral in France. Eventually, her full name, her school and even her home address were leaked online, forcing her to change schools and receive around-the clock police protection.
“She lives her life completely isolated, she has changed schools, she no longer lives normally, her family has been in hiding,” Malka added. “At the age of 17, she lives under total protection, she does not reply to anything.”
“How are these thousands of young people supposed to live under death threats – what are they going to become?” Malka asked, referring to Mila and the thousands of like-minded French teenagers.
Mila’s lawyer has warned that those issuing death threats to her are risking jail.
“People who do this on Twitter risk jail. This is what is happening. A person was tried a few weeks ago, he was sentenced to three years in prison… so when you post it is not without risk,” Malka said.
Title image: Richard Malka, lawyer of French teenager Mila and the Charlie Hebdo staff. (source: RMC screen capture)
