MINELRES: ERRC: NGO Action against Hate Speech in Serbia

[MINELRES moderator]

Original sender: European Roma Rights Center <errc@errc.org>


22 March 2004

FIRST DIRECT CIVIL ACTION BY NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS CONCERNING
HATE SPEECH FILED IN SERBIA

The European Roma Rights Center (ERRC), a Budapest-based international
public interest law organization, the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) and
Minority Rights Center (MRC), two Belgrade-based human rights groups,
have just filed a direct joint civil action with a court in Belgrade
against the Kurir daily newspaper over a hate speech incident.

In the 27-28 December 2003 weekend edition, the paper printed in its
"Joke of the Day" column a text suggesting that killing Roma is a
legitimate recreational activity. The use of words such as "Gypsy",
"hunting", and "killing" clearly constitutes incitement to racial hated
and discrimination as well as racially-motivated violence targeting
Roma. The text also describes Roma as people who scavenge food from
garbage containers, thus holding them up to derision and belittling the
serious social and existential problems faced by this minority in Serbia
and throughout Europe.

By publishing the text at issue, Kurir acted in violation the Serbian
Constitution, the Constitutional Charter of Serbia and Montenegro, the
countrys Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Civil Liberties and
numerous binding international instruments containing a ban on hate
speech and incitement to discrimination and racially motivated violence.

In its General Recommendation no. 15, of 23 March 1993, the United
Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination explained
that states are required to penalize both the dissemination of ideas
based upon racial superiority or hatred and incitement to racial hatred.
It then went on to stress that the prohibition of the dissemination of
all such ideas is compatible with the right to freedom of opinion and
expression ... [as] ... the citizen's exercise of this right carries
special duties and responsibilities ... among which the obligation not
to disseminate racist ideas is of particular importance.

Under the recently adopted Serbian Public Information Act, actions for
hate speech may be filed by both persons who are members of the
racial/ethnic group directly affected as well as human rights
organizations in their own capacity. In this particular case,
organizations whose mandate is the protection of human rights appear for
the first time as plaintiffs before a Serbian court, along with Mr Petar
Antic, Executive Director of the Minority Rights Center and himself a
Rom, whose human dignity has been violated by the "joke" in question.

The plaintiffs are requesting the court to find that the text
constitutes hate speech and to issue a ban on the paper publishing this
or any other text that foments discrimination, hatred or violence
against Roma. They
are also asking that Kurir be ordered to print without comment the
courts judgment in its entirety and pay financial compensation to Mr
Anti� for the mental distress suffered as a consequence of the violation
of his
personal dignity. Since the racist "joke" is currently still on the
paper's Internet website, the ERRC, HLC, and CPM have also asked the
court to issue a mandatory injunction for its immediate removal.

Additional information on the situation of Roma in Serbia and Montenegro
is available at 
http://errc.org/publications/indices/serbia_and_montenegro.shtml. For
more regarding the above action, please contact 
Branimir Plese, 
Legal Director, 
European Roma Rights Center 
(email: branko@errc.org, phone: +361 413 2200).

_____________________________________________

The European Roma Rights Center is an international public interest law
organisation which monitors the rights of Roma and provides legal
defence in cases of human rights abuse. For more information about the
European Roma Rights Center, visit the ERRC on the web at
http://www.errc.org.

European Roma Rights Center
1386 Budapest 62
P.O. Box 906/93
Hungary


Phone: +36 1 4132200
Fax:   +36 1 4132201

_____________________________________________

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