Poikāns on Divya Viswanathan case: focus should be on whether her statements match the facts
AI researcher Ilmārs Poikāns said on a TV24 programme that criticism of Indian citizen Divya Kanan Viswanathan is not linked to her origin. The State Police will assess her complaint about threats and harassment.
Ilmārs Poikāns, a researcher at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Latvia, commented on the TV24 programme “Nedēļa. Post scriptum” on Indian citizen Divya Kanan Viswanathan's appeal to the State Police in Latvia. He said he believes the criticism directed at her on social media is not connected to her origin or skin colour.
The complaint to police
Viswanathan turned to the State Police on 26 October. A statement sent to the media on behalf of the Viswanathan family says she asked the police to assess what she regards as a public smear and harassment campaign, threats, the spread of false information and racist remarks on social media.
Poikāns' assessment
Poikāns said on the programme that he had not noticed anyone targeting Viswanathan because of her origin or skin colour. According to him, it makes no difference to him where a person comes from or what colour their skin is. He argued that attention in this case should go to Viswanathan's own public statements and whether they correspond to the facts, rather than trying to explain everything as racism.
He put his position bluntly, saying that a person must answer for what they have said themselves. Poikāns also said the statement sent to the media contained many claims that do not match the facts.
In his view, there is no basis for automatically linking everything that is happening to racism. The question of possible threats, harassment and incitement of hatred will be assessed by the State Police. The full programme is shown on TV24.
