'Blue Lives Murder' shirts on Amazon sparks controversy

New York, June 12

A woman in the US has said that 'Blue Lives Murder' shirts available for sale on e-commerce giant Amazon are hate speech, according to a report. For the woman named Ceteka Perry from Spring, Texas, it's personal because her son is a police officer in Utah.

She said she's an Amazon customer who called the company to complain."All of it is just very offensive. I know they're very much Black Lives Matter and that's fine," Perry was quoted as saying to click2houston.com.

"They can have that be their agenda but to say that blue lives murder, to me that's hate speech," she added.

According to the media reports, the San Antonio Police Officers Association also agreed with the woman. On Twitter, they wrote "selling incendiary shirts like these is not only an insult to police officers but a form of hate speech that foments violence against them."

However, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Houston said the words are the truth. Ashton P Woods said that the phrase "Blue Lives Murder" is not new and didn't hold back about its use.

"Blue lives murder is not a hate speech. It is, in fact, telling the truth," Woods was quoted as saying.

"We have seen how black people and brown people and other people of colour have been treated by the police like our lives do not matter," Wood added.

The phrase is a play on "Black Lives Matter."

Black Lives Matter activists and others across the US have for weeks been protesting the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck. IANS

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