A popular online chat forum has been shut down by its owner because of racial hate speech.

Tony Brannon, owner of the website Bermuda.com and a host of chat forums, explained via e-mail that recent postings had led to his decision to shut down the site's general discussion forum.

“Unlike your newspaper where you have an editor - to vet what is printed - the Internet Discussion Room on Bermuda.com was a place where anyone could post,” wrote Mr. Brannon who is off the Island.

“I guess it was total freedom of speech. However it has gotten totally out of hand, almost like local talk radio.”

Mr. Brannon forwarded examples of some of the offensive speech and said: “We feel with Tourism being in the state that it is, we do not need the rest of the world reading locals and others beating the hell out of each other and our politicians. It hasn't helped either with everyone lowering the bar into race hate postings. So we have stopped it.”

One posting, from “White Power” considered that Bermuda's problem was “too many crazy crack head n***ers” and suggested that the solution was to “send them back to Africa where they came from”.

And both Bermuda Sun columnist Bryant Trew, who runs his own chat forum, and Mr. Brannon have both been subjected to abuse on the sites by a former Bermuda resident, Laurence D'Alberti.

Other racially offensive speech, targeting candidates Ashfield DeVent and Leonard Santucci, surfaced during the run up to the Pembroke East Central by-election.

Complaints had been made to the Department of Telecommunications and the matter was brought to Minister Renee Webb's attention Friday.

The Minister said yesterday that Mr. Brannon was asked to monitor the forum but he was not asked to shut it down.

Speech which is unlawful under normal conditions is also outlawed on the internet, she explained and liability rests with the website owner. “He has been very co-operative. In this case he had warned people that they had to desist or he was going to have to shut it down. We didn't ask him to shut it down. It didn't get to that point.”

Not everyone is happy with Mr. Brannon's decision. The forum, which has hosted discussions extremely critical of Government's policies, was “beginning to affect some real change on this Island,” according to one of its contributors who urged Mr. Brannon to reconsider his decision.