TOLERANCE OF HATE SPEECH AS A VERBAL CRIME - A SAFETY FACTOR IN THE SOCIETY
Dragan Sekulovski · 2021
The increase of hate speech and aggressive speech that jeopardizes the safety of individuals and groups has been evident in the Republic of North Macedonia in the recent years. Such examples of verbal crimes have mostly been seen on social networks but also in traditional media. This negative trend has a high level on impunity, given the poor court practice on crimes related to hate speech or other serious verbal delicts. Individual journalists and/or media outlets are often targeted as a subject of verbal assaults on social media and other internet platforms, but also in person. This makes their working environment unsafe. Journalists and media workers who are threatened and subjected to attacks are facing selfcensorship and by this, the private safety of individuals affects the right on information which is a constitutional right to all citizens. Within this research, collected data from 26 basic courts throughout the country resulting in five court cases related to hate speech is a subject of elaboration together with several qualitative interviews with media and legal professionals who have an extensive practice in freedom of expression. A broader context is given to a specific part of the national legislation in relation to hate speech, with reference to some of the local reports by relevant civil society organisations. The expected result is to prove the hypothesis that individual threats related to abusing of the freedom of speech is infringing the freedom of information consequently. Furthermore, if there is tolerance to verbal crimes, primarily hate speech, towards individuals and groups, and especially towards media workers, the freedom of press will suffer in general, and journalists will be prevented from performing/doing their duties professionally.