Wednesday, February 09, 2022
By Manoj Kumawat
Hyundai Claims Pakistani Tweeter Handle Is Unofficial
It was four days back when the social media handles of the Korean carmaker Hyundai Motors shared a post in solidarity with the “Kashmiri brothers” in their “struggle for freedom”. This started a Twitter war in India, and soon the #BoycottHyundai” started trending on tweeter. Going through the anger of Indian users, the carmaker immediately removed the post and issued a statement apologizing for the tweet, saying that it was not made an unofficial account.
Now, once again on February 8, 2022, the carmaker has expressed “deep regret’ with a message “deeply regretted any offence caused to the people of India by this unofficial social media activity”. It would be interesting to know that #BoycottHyundai” was among the top ten tweets made since then.
In a statement made by Hyundai India, it said, "stands firmly for its "strong ethos of respecting nationalism". As this statement was not enough to cool down the anger of netizens in India, the company issued another statement expressing the deep regret for the incident. Anyhow, the statement by the company seems to be false, as according to the image given below, the official account from which the tweet was made belongs to one of the Hyundai dealers in Pakistan.
Before this the fast-food restaurant chain, KFC also faced the same criticism by the netizens in India, after its official Pakistan handle shared the same post “solidarity” with Kashmir. This post was shared on the same date February 5, 2022. This post also received the same treatment by Indian Twitter users, and they started the #BoycottKFC movement. On Monday KFC India posted a statement with an apology.
