Pakistani Twitter heavyweight hits India where it hurts

 JournalismPakistan.com |  Published: 20 August 2016

Senior journalist Omar R Quraishi ignited anger on Twitter with comments about India's Olympic achievements. His provocative tweets elicited a strong reaction from Indian followers.

Summary

ISLAMABAD – Senior Pakistani journalist Omar R Quraishi is a Twitter heavyweight with 114k followers. So when he casually tweeted this week about an Indian athlete winning the country's first bronze medal and how they would go on to portray that, it infuriated the neighbors.

“Finally one of the 119 competitors that India sent to Rio has won a medal – a bronze – now see how they portray it as if they won 20 golds,” tweeted Quraishi. This one tweet left the Indians bristling with anger.

The tweet even prompted Indian film great Amitabh Bachan to respond, with some tweeple making death threats to Quraishi, who is Editor Digital Properties with Samaa Television.

“This tweet has brought a disgraceful response from Indians and shows how intolerant they are,” Quraishi told JournalismPakistan.com Saturday. “I just stated a fact but for so doing I continue to be targeted on Twitter.”

He however, pointed out that many of the accounts hurling threats and criticizing him were new and went to show it was an organized campaign against him.

Quraishi bravely stood up to criticism though and chose to publish more ‘facts’ that made Indian Twitterati even more upset.

 “For a population of over 1.25 billion India managed just one bronze medal – Norway with 5 million managed 2 — tch tch tch,” he quipped. “My timeline would suggest that there is something mentally wrong with many Indians - cannot take criticism even if it's well founded,” read another one of his Tweets.

Quraishi said he has never had such crazy response to his Tweets ever since joining the social media site in 2009.  

KEY POINTS:

• Omar R Quraishi has 114k Twitter followers.
• His tweet commented on India's bronze medal at the Olympics.
• The tweet led to significant backlash from Indian users.
• Critics accused him of instigating rather than just stating facts.
• Quraishi noted threats and organized criticism from new Twitter accounts.