Ilhan Omar speech proved to be mistranslated but outrage continues spread
Source: The Guardian
Ilhan Omar speech proved to be mistranslated but outrage continues spread
Republicans, rightwing figures and foreign politicians have seized upon the video despite proof the lawmaker was misquoted
Faisal Ali
Tue 6 Feb 2024 07.27 GMT
First published on Mon 5 Feb 2024 15.57 GMT
A week after a mistranslated clip of Ilhan Omar suggesting she said she was “Somalian first” sparked outrage online, some far-right House Republicans are still following through with calls for the progressive lawmaker to be censured. And the repercussions of the misinformation extend beyond the country.
The Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, has gone furthest in her response to the clip, calling Omar a “foreign agent in our government”. Greene, a leading supporter of Donald Trump, who also attempted to censure the Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib in November, called Omar a “terrorist sympathizer” on X last week, adding: “Somalian first. Muslim second. She never mentions America.”
According to the Minnesota Reformer, a Minnesota-based news outlet, which worked with two independent Somali translators, Omar said: “We are people who know that they are Somali and Muslim”, not that she was “Somalians first” as the video suggested.
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Omar, a Somali American congresswoman, had been filmed delivering a speech at a hotel in Minneapolis on 27 January where she addressed members of her constituency on a recent agreement reached between the breakaway Somali region of Somaliland and Ethiopia in early January, which bypassed Somalia’s federal government in Mogadishu.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/05/ilhan-omar-speech-somalia-mistranslation-republicans
Alternate link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/ilhan-omar-speech-proved-mistranslated-155724403.html
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