Mouflon (Muffel in Luxembourgish), a subspecies of wild sheep, have been the cause of a severe amount of concern due to their presence in the woods around Echternach.
The wild sheep are not native to Luxembourg and are due to to be culled in an administrative hunt.
The Ministry of the Environment has highlighted that it is exploring all alternative options to a cull, but there seem to be very few alternatives.
Environment minister Carole Dieschbourg has made a public call for the violent discussions on social media to end via a Facebook post on Wednesday morning.
In the post, Dieschbourg wrote that people are allowed to disagree, but that she had noted that other social media users are making calls to violence based on false allegations. The minister above all noted that it is unacceptable that other parties are supporting these calls. She ended the post by stating that she has reported some comments to the police, highlighting that 'we need a healthy culture of discussion without threats or escalation'.
The party Dieschbourg referred to is the Pirate Party, as the party's southern constituency page (Piraten Bezierk Suden) liked a comment stating that 'it would be more eco-friendly to shoot Carole [Dieschbourg]'.
Other comments have also suggested shooting the minister rather than the sheep.
Dieschbourg said she would not be commenting the matter further when asked by RTL and said she would leave it at the message she posted on Facebook.
The Pirate Party reacted to the incident on Wednesday morning. The party distanced itself from the hate speech targeted towards the minister via a press release and defended itself against the accusation of spreading false information. The press release also highlighted that the Pirate Party regularly checks and filters comments on its Facebook page.
Pirate Party MP Marc Goergen went a step further and made it clear that the Pirate Party does not support such comments and had deleted any inappropriate comments. He said the post on Facebook on which the comments occurred had more success than the party expected, adding that there were around 1,000 comments. "We instantly told our moderators and Bee Secure to delete inappropriate comments, which was done, but took between half an hour and an hour due to the volume of comments. We were criticised for censoring free speech and for aligning ourselves with the government, but that was not the case. The topic might be emotional, but we have to stay fair and correct."
