The border between freedom of speech and hate speech

-Freedom of speech represents the basic postulate of democracy, that is, the belief that everyone, within the limits of public interest and respect for the principle of inviolability of the honor and reputation of others, has the right to state their observation, belief, or otherwise express their opinion.

– Hate speech is any verbal or written expression of intolerance towards a certain race, ethnic or minority community, gender, or other group, and calls for discrimination or violation of their human rights.

– The boundaries between the two institutes are difficult to define, both in the social sense and in the judicial protection of persons towards whom hate speech is directed. However, it can be said that everyone can have their opinion and express it as long as it does not pose a danger that “speech” will turn into physical or other forms of violence against the group towards which the hate speech is directed.

- To date, given the development of technology and the transmission of information at high speed, methods have been developed to suppress, but not permanently solve the problem of hate speech. Some of these are: 1) censorship of certain individuals or groups of individuals who use their influence in society for the sake of spreading their ideas, which absolutely contradict the principles of the civilized world, and the respect of human rights to a sufficient extent.

2) By creating legal provisions, first of all in the Criminal Code, which stipulates that if a criminal offense is committed out of hatred towards another person because of national or ethnic affiliation, race or religion or the absence of such affiliation, disability, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity , the court will appreciate that circumstance as aggravating, unless it is prescribed as a feature of the basic or more serious form of the criminal offense.

The definition of the criminal offense of Inciting national, racial and religious hatred also contributed to the reduction of hate speech. For this criminal offense, a prison sentence of 6 months to 5 years is prescribed.

 - It is necessary to distinguish hate speech from damage to reputation and honor. This is due to the fact that hate speech refers exclusively to the violent implementation of beliefs, most often directed against a group, although in certain cases hate speech can also be directed at an individual, e.g. In cases of calling for public murder.

Violations of reputation and honor are repressively acted upon in such a way that the injured party is awarded monetary satisfaction to the extent to which his honor and reputation were injured, and eventually an order is issued to the person who insults reputation and honor to stop those actions and remove traces, if such traces since.

The purpose of demarcating the concepts of hate speech and freedom of speech is precisely to prevent the creation of a situation in which an environment will be created in which different opinions and attitudes are condemned only for the reason that they do not correspond to the current state of society, but also to prevent an environment in which an individual or group feel threatened in any way because of their characteristics or belonging to a certain group.

The lesson of the blog is that every individual has the right and the opportunity to form and express their opinion about any person or group, however, without jeopardizing their safety and integrity, or the opportunity for them to express their opinion in a manner consistent with the public interest.