Guidelines for prosecutors on hate speech on the Internet

Policy Response DateOctober 29, 2012 Country: Poland General Type: Racist discourse Racism and discrimination phenomena: Extremism - organised Racist Violence, Anti-migrant/xenophobia, Anti-semitism, Islamophobia, Afrophobia, Arabophobia, Anti-roma/zinghanophobia, Religious intolerance, On grounds of other belief, Anti-roma/ romaphobia, Xenophobia
Groups affected / Interested in: Migrants, Refugees, Roma & Travelers, Muslims, Ethnic minorities, Religious minorities, Asylum seekers, Africans/black people, National minorities Key socio-economic/institutional areas: Policing - law enforcement, Media, Internet, Anti-racism Hate speech/Racist Discourse Medium: Internet

The Prosecutor General Andrzej Seremet signed the guidelines for prosecutors concerning the acts of persecuting hate speech on the Internet which are supposed to, among others, help the accused or the defamed on the web on racial, national and religious grounds. At the conference titled “Hate speech on the Internet – How to fight against it?”, organized by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights on 29 October, 2012 in Warsaw, the Prosecutor underlined that anonymity on the web is wrongly identified by some Internet users with impunity. He added that there is no need for new law to persecute the above mentioned acts, and the problem itself lies within the scope of practical competences of the prosecutor's office.

Source:

Newsweek.pl, 29.10.2012, Walka z mową nienawiści w Internecie: prokuratura ma wytyczne (Counteracting hate speech in the Internet: guidelines of the public prosecutor's office), http://spoleczenstwo.newsweek.pl/walka-z--mowa-nienawisci--w-internecie--prokuratura-ma-wytyczne,97790,1,1.html, Accessed od 12.12.2012.