A campaign to boycott Amazon is picking up steam in Saudi Arabia on Twitter among people unhappy with The Washington Post’s coverage of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The connection between the two is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. He owns The Washington Post independently from the Seattle e-commerce giant. On Sunday, #boycottamazon become the top trending hashtag on Twitter in Saudi Arabia, according to Bloomberg.
Twitter users in the country have been tweeting screenshots that show them deleting their accounts with Amazon.com, using the boycott hashtag. They say The Post’s coverage of their country is unfair. Participants are also targeting Souq.com, a local subsidiary of Amazon.
https://twitter.com/Hamad_Almunif/status/1059383571947970561
https://twitter.com/makki6/status/1059478559406854144
Khashoggi was a columnist for The Washington Post who was critical of the leadership in his home country. He was killed at a Saudi consulate in Turkey on Oct. 2. Gruesome details, still to be confirmed, surrounding Khashoggi’s disappearance captured international attention and thrust Saudi Arabia and its supporters into crisis.
But the Saudis tweeting their support for crown prince Mohammed bin Salman believe the international media coverage of Khashoggi’s death is biased.
Amazon could not be immediately reached to comment on the boycott campaign.