First judgment involving cyber hate

Alert DateMarch 15, 2007 Country: Austria Address: Vienna General Type: Racist discourse, Discrimination Racism and discrimination phenomena: Anti-migrant/xenophobia, Anti-semitism, Homophobia
Groups affected / Interested in: Migrants, Religious minorities Key socio-economic/institutional areas: Internet Hate speech/Racist Discourse Medium: Internet
Victims Data
Victims Nationality/Ethnic Origin N/A
Victims Gender N/A
Victims Age N/A
Victims Number N/A
Fatalities - deaths N/A
Perpetrators Data
Perpetrators Nationality/Ethnic Origin Austrian
Perpetrator Gender Male
Perpetrator Age 46-55
Perpetrators Number 1
Extremist/Organised Group Violence No

The Vienna-based ant-racism NGO ZARA succeeded in bringing its first case of cyber hate to an Austrian criminal court. At the beginning of the year 2007 ZARA received a complaint about racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic postings on a weblog. When the owner of the weblog mentioned, that he had previously reported this case of cyber hate to ZARA, we received an e-mail containing racist, and anti-Semitic hate speech and threats against our organisation. ZARA reported the obvious criminal offence to the Austrian authorities, who successfully tracked down the author. On September 22nd, 2008 the offender was sentenced to nine months in prison (seven of them on probation) for incitement. Although the conviction is not yet final as the court of appeal can still be approached by the offender, this important signal against cyber hate was widely covered in the Austrian media.

Source: http://www.zara.or.at/materialien/rassismus-report/Racism_Report_2008.pdf (Date of access: 2011-09-29)