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Professor Who Wished Queen An ‘Excruciating’ Death Slams Her Again

The Queen
Credit: Alamy

A professor who previously wished Queen Elizabeth II a painful death has criticised Her Majesty again.

In an interview with The Cut, Uju Anya, from Carnegie Mellon University, stood by her now-deleted tweet following the Queen’s passing. 

She told the publication: “In my tweet, I did not wish her dead.

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“I did not tell anyone to kill her. I said nothing except wishing her the pain in death that she caused for millions of people.

“There’s not going to be any apology from me. I stand by what I said.”

The 46-year-old continued: “‘Speak no ill of the dead is a weapon that’s levelled against the oppressed to silence them, to lionize oppressors, and to sanitise their history. What respect am I supposed to have for her, for her family?

“Oh, well, her family is mourning her. My family is mourning as well.”

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In her now-deleted tweet that originally caused the backlash, Anya reportedly wrote: “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving r**ing genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.”

Following the post, the professor faced a ton of backlash, including from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who commented on the situation: “This is someone supposedly working to make the world better? I don’t think so. Wow.”

Standing by her statement, Anya then replied: “If anyone expects me to express anything but disdain for the monarch who supervised a government that sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family and the consequences of which those alive today are still trying to overcome, you can keep wishing upon a star.”

Directed at Bezos, she added: “May everyone you and your merciless greed have harmed in this world remember you as fondly as I remember my colonisers.”

It’s believed that Twitter removed the initial tweet for violating its platform’s rules that forbid its users from ‘wishing or hoping that someone experiences physical harm’.

Carnegie Mellon University also addressed the professor’s posts with a statement.

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It read: “We do not condone the offensive and objectionable messages posted by Uku Anya today on her personal social media account,” the university tweeted. “Free expression is core to the mission of higher education, however, the views she shared absolutely do not represent the values of the institution, nor the standards of discourse we seek to foster.”

However, Anya has stood by her thoughts and in a chat with NBC News said: “My earliest memories were from living in a war-torn area, and rebuilding still hasn’t finished even today.

“Queen Elizabeth was representative of the cult of white womanhood.

“There’s this notion that she was this little-old-lady grandma type with her little hats and her purses and little dogs and everything as if she inhabited this place or this space in the imaginary, this public image, as someone who didn’t have a hand in the bloodshed of her crown.”

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Written by Rosario Monachino

Rosario is a content editor at IGV who specialises in film, TV and entertainment news. He has a degree in English and Film from the University of Salford and a masters in Journalism from Liverpool John Moores University.