A petition that calls on the government to revoke Article 50 is nearing the five million signatures mark, as the petition creator says she has received death threats.
Margaret Georgiadou, 77, said she had been ‘totally amazed’ by the reaction to the Revoke Article 50 petition on the government’s website.
But the success of the petition has come at a price for the creator. She has tweeted that she has been left ‘shaking like a leaf’ after the retired lecturer received ‘horrible’ phone calls and abuse via Facebook Messenger.
Georgiadou, a retired lecturer, has come under scrutiny by those angered by the petition who have reviewed her tweets and sent messages to her social media accounts.
She tweeted: ‘In the past 10 hours have had three death threats over the phone, my fb account has been hacked and had a torrent of abuse on Facebook. Am closing my FB account.’
She added: ‘Who wants Brexit so much that they are prepared to kill for it?’
She later told the BBC: ‘I feel terrible, I feel angry with myself because I thought I was tougher than that. But I was scared.’
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‘I haven’t even told my husband because he is very old and he would become hysterical.’
In response to the threats, pro-EU campaigners have created a fundraiser in support of Georgiadou, who has been credited with helping to generate fresh momentum behind the campaign to stop Brexit.
The total number of signatures on her petition is expected to hit 5,000,000 today, and it is now the biggest petition on the parliament’s website.
On Friday the petitions committee refuted claims from pro-Brexit newspapers and Brexiteers like Nigel Farage that a majority of signatures came from abroad.
The committee said that approximately 96% of signatures were from the United Kingdom, with the remaining 4% of names mostly coming from countries with large UK expat communities, like France, Spain, Germany and America.
Anyone who is a UK resident or a British citizen can sign the government website petitions. This includes British citizens living overseas.
• You can sign the petition on the government’s petition website here.
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