“France has threatened Rumble, and now they have crossed a red line by arresting Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov,” said Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski
Rumble’s CEO, Chris Pavlovski, announced on Sunday that he has left Europe following the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.
In a post on Twitter, Pavlovski said that France had “crossed a red line” with the arrest.
“I’m a little late to this, but for good reason — I’ve just safely departed from Europe,” Pavlovski Tweeted.
“France has threatened Rumble, and now they have crossed a red line by arresting Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, reportedly for not censoring speech.
“Rumble will not stand for this behavior and will use every legal means available to fight for freedom of expression, a universal human right. We are currently fighting in the courts of France, and we hope for Pavel Durov’s immediate release.”
Pavlovski used a subsequent Tweet to highlight the censorship of Rumble around the world.
“Free speech is under major assault and I will not stop fighting for it.”
?? China bans Rumble
?? France threatens Rumble, we leave
?? Brazil threatens Rumble, we leave
?? UK threatens Rumble
?? Russia bans Rumble
?? New Zealand threatens Rumble?? France arrests Telegram CEO
Free speech is under major assault and I will not stop fighting for it.
— Chris Pavlovski (@chrispavlovski) August 25, 2024
Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris on Saturday, on charges related to the spread of illicit material via Telegram. He was arrested after arriving at Le Bourget Airport on a private plane from Azerbaijan.
In a statement on Telegram on Sunday, the company said, “Telegram abides by EU laws,” adding, “Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov has nothing to hide.”
Analyst Mike Benz believes the US State Department is ultimately behind the arrest, because it wants to control Telegram.
“What they [the State Department] want to do is not kill Telegram like they wanted to kill Wikileaks,” Benz said in a video posted to Twitter.
“They want to control it. And the problem was, they didn’t have the ability to put sufficient pressure on Pavel to break his will. So he was living in Dubai. Now they have leverage. I believe that’s the purpose of this prosecution: not to establish a legal precedent that for every encrypted chat app its founder is personally responsible for all illegal conversations or transactions on the platform, but rather to force Telegram to become WhatsApp.”
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has said that Durov “miscalculated” by thinking he could be a “brilliant ‘man of the world’ who lives wonderfully without a motherland.”
“For all our common enemies now, he is Russian—and therefore unpredictable and dangerous.”
“Durov should finally realise that one cannot choose one’s fatherland,” Medvedev added.
