Minister of Justice Nela Kuburović has stated that the prevention of and zero tolerance for hate speech and hate crime was one of the priorities of the Ministry of Justice and the Serbian Government. At the International Conference on Hate Speech and Hate Crime, which was held as part of this year’s Pride Week, she emphasised that the Serbian Government had recognised the need for an adequate response to hate speech and the crime of hate speech. She explained that the recognition was evident in the objectives the Government was pursuing also with the implementation of Chapter 23 Action Plan. “The degree of human rights development depended on the degree of development of the democracy in a society. Holding the Pride Week again this year is one of the positive examples of the development of a legal order based on tolerance and human rights in Serbia“, Kuburović stated.
She added that hate speech and hate crimes still existed in our society despite there being a solid legislation, and that those were particularly present in cases of the LGBT population. That was why – as she explained - those challenges needed to be faced jointly and in the long-term. She stressed that the subject matter was very important to the Ministry of Justice, as the success of the fight against hate crime largely depended on the efficiency of the judiciary.
The Justice Minister noted that she was certain that the implementation of a continuous training of those holding judicial functions and other government organs, as well as the familiarisation with the relevant international legal provisions and the practice of the European Court for Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee, would contribute to the improvement of the courts statistics on the processing of criminal offences committed on the basis of hate. “When I say that we are improving the courts statistics, I do not mean that have an increase in the number of criminal offences. I mean that the judicial organs are acting appropriately to criminal charges and that we have final court decisions. The statistics have shown that in 2016, we had no final court decisions in cases of criminal offences of equality violations; not even at a first-instance level, despite 59 charges having been raised the year before“, Kuburović said.
She highlighted that it was necessary to work more intensively and in the long-run on raising awareness of all citizens in order to build a more tolerant society based on a respect for diversity, without which it would be impossible to eradicate social stereotypes giving rise to hate.
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