Czech Republic: Romani activists help file crime reports over hate speech online
Activists in the Czech Republic who advocate for the rights of Romani people are filing crime reports over the incitement to racially-motivated hatred of Roma being perpetrated on social media; the reports were developed on the basis of evidence gathered by Romani volunteers working on a project of the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) and news server Romea.cz. The reports were filed by lawyers from the Czech organization Forum for Human Rights (Fórum pro lidská práva) with the police.
“Calling for ethnic violence against Romani people or any other minority on social media is illegal in a democratic country. It is just as unlawful as theft, assault or fraud,” says ERRC director Đorđe Jovanović.
“The racists who post anti-Roma comments online need to understand this. The crime reports we are filing should send the signal that racism has repercussions and that nobody has the right to spread racist opinions publicly and endanger the lives of Romani people,” the ERRC director says.
The cases involve social media users who repeatedly published racist remarks calling for violence against Romani people in the Czech Republic (or their annihilation, in some cases); some statements targeted the Romani people from Ukraine seeking shelter in the Czech Republic from the Russian war. Lawyers from the Forum for Human Rights are of the opinion that the reported statements rise to the level of felony incitement to hatred of a group or incitement of the limitation of their rights under Section 356 of the Criminal Code.
“There is no place for racism in our society. We thoroughly analyzed the online content documented by the Romani volunteers and decided to report the most serious hate speech to the police,” says Alexandra Dubová, a lawyer with the Forum.
“We believe that racist statements against the Roma community have no place in a democratic society and hope the police will take active steps to make the internet a safe space for everyone,” the lawyer says. The evidence for the crime reports was accumulated by Romani volunteers involved in the “Challenging Digital Antigypsyism” project of the ERRC and ROMEA.
This project brings Romani youth together to monitor hate speech against Romani people in the online space, to report it, and to work together with lawyers defending the rights of Romani people to bring legal actions challenging hate online. “Our volunteers who monitor hate speech on social networks focus on statements that are quite frequently very radical and contain incitement to violence,” says Štefan Balog, the coordinator of the project volunteers in the Czech Republic.
“Interestingly, some posts that are flagged to the social networks are then left online by them. I hope that in the future we will manage to file even more crime reports, because there are still many more cases of dangerous hate speech going undetected,” Balog says.
“We would of course like this not to happen, but when it does happen, we want to fight it with all our strength,” the coordinator says. The organizations will closely monitor the next steps taken by the Czech Police in the criminal complaints.
At the same time, the project will continue to explore other paths, both extralegal and legal, to ensure that antigypsyism communicated digitally is then challenged effectively. The project is made possible thanks to funding from the EVZ Foundation.
