“Will consider taking legal action in some cases”, says Kojima productions after fake posts circulated
Image courtesy:KojiPro2015_EN/Twitter
On Sunday, Japanese video game designer, Hideo Kojima responded to the fake assassin posts being circulated across social media and news outlets that misidentifies Kojima as the assassin of former Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe.
Kojima Productions in a tweet said it strongly condemns the spread of fake news and rumors that convey false information. They also said that they will consider taking legal action in some cases.
“#KojimaProductions strongly condemns the spread of fake news and rumors that convey false information. We do not tolerate such libel and will consider taking legal action in some cases,” Kojima Productions tweeted.
#KojimaProductions strongly condemns the spread of fake news and rumors that convey false information. We do not tolerate such libel and will consider taking legal action in some cases. pic.twitter.com/fDi0FR9kB0
— KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS (Eng) (@KojiPro2015_EN) July 9, 2022
Abe was shot in the chest while campaigning for a parliamentary election in the Nara region.
Police have arrested a 41-year-old man suspected of carrying out the shooting. NHK quoted the suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, as telling police he was dissatisfied with Abe and wanted to kill him.
Soon after the incident, an internet troll on 4chan posted a racist image that links Kojima’s face with the shooter. Another user replied to the post with three additional pictures of Kojima that show the Metal Gear and Death Stranding designer in a Soviet cap, as well as posing with images of Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara.
“French comedian Georges Jordito later reshared these images on Twitter as part of a now-deleted “satirical” post that said the culprit was a Japanese soccer star, Keisuke Honda. However, Damien Rieu, a far-right French politician associated with the country’s nationalist movement, took it seriously and tweeted out images of Kojima with text translated to: “The far-left kills.” As pointed out by Vice, the images were then picked up by Greek and Iranian news outlets that mistakenly used the pictures in their coverage of the assassination,” a source as per The Verge.
Rieu has since deleted his tweet and issued an apology to Kojima, noting “I naively took a joke for information.”
