NGO asks Moldovan parliament to adopt amendments to sanction hate, prejudice acts

Chisinau, 6 February /MOLDPRES/- The Promo-LEX Association has made a public appeal to MPs to adopt as soon as possible the legislative amendments to sanction hate and prejudice acts.

Promo-LEX members say that in recent years, hate speech and incitement to discrimination is increasingly used both in political and religious contexts. Last year alone, Promo-LEX identified 835 cases of hate speech and incitement to discrimination, which affected various groups of people. Most cases had men (87%) as authors: politicians, representatives of the Orthodox Church, journalists, opinion makers.

Promo-LEX experts note that the media remains the most important source of distribution of intolerance in the public space. For example, in August-November 2019 hate speech cases obtained 6,288,558 views, representing 51,541 views per day.

“Promo-LEX reiterates that freedom of expression is a fundamental pillar for any democratic state and does not challenge its importance for political and social processes. Adopting the legislative amendments will increase the degree of responsibility of the actors involved in promoting hate speech and will offer the possibility to combat the facts motivated by prejudice, including hate speech, effectively ”, the appeal reads.

According to statistics, the indicator of intolerance in Moldova is 6.5 points, and in 2017, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) recommended Moldova to review the legislation to penalize the type of speech. CERD expressed concern about the increasingly frequent promotion of stereotypes and prejudices against vulnerable groups: women, LGBT, Muslims, refugees, Roma, Jews, and the lack of responsibility for such violations.