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On Thursday, during the discussion of the Seimas Commission for the Prevention of Suicide and Violence on incitement to hatred, he announced that he had prepared the pertinent amendments to the Codes of Criminal and Administrative Offenses.
“It is proposed to transfer harassment and contempt to the Code of Administrative Offenses. In this case, the problem of danger is likely to be easier to identify. Of course, direct incitement to hatred and incitement to discriminate against a group of people it remains in the Penal Code ”, said the Minister.
The Penal Code now establishes that “anyone who mocks, despises, incites hatred or publicly incites discrimination against a group of people or a person who belongs to it for reasons of age, sex, sexual orientation, disability, race , nationality, language, origin, social condition, religion, belief punishable by a fine or restriction of freedom, or arrest or imprisonment of up to two years. ‘
Ms. Dobrovolska suggests removing the words “mocked and despised” from this article.
Its draft, which has not yet been registered, would create a new article in the Code of Administrative Offenses entitled “Bullying and contempt for nationality, race, sex, origin, religion or other group affiliation.”
According to the minister, it has not yet been decided what fines could be imposed for this.
Ms. Dobrovolska and other officials who participated in the discussion noted that criminal liability for hate speech is now relatively rare, creating the impression of impunity.
“As the decisions of the national courts show, freedom of expression is nevertheless a priority. The rulings indicate that writing negative comments is unethical and immoral behavior, but criminal responsibility should be used as a last resort. And rarely. it applies, because hate speech is not considered a sufficiently dangerous phenomenon, “said Gražina Ramanauskaitė, Inspector of Journalistic Ethics.
“I dare say that the decisions of the Lithuanian courts send a message that hate crimes are not punished in Lithuania,” he added.
According to E. Dobrovolska, today using criminal responsibility as a last resort, there is no other mechanism to bring the authors of some comments to justice.
On the other hand, he noted that the Constitution of Lithuania does not allow the exclusion of incitement to hatred from the Penal Code, as it establishes that incitement to hatred is a criminal offense.
Furthermore, the Minister of Justice proposes to include in the Code of Administrative Offenses three additional characteristics for which responsibility could be applied: namely, in addition to those already provided, it is intended to include harassment and disregard for gender identity, ethnic origin, skin color.
According to E. Dobrovolska, this would help officials to identify violations more easily and accurately.
Aušra Sadauskienė, the chief investigator of the Lithuanian Criminal Police Office, stated that the officers are awaiting the changes mentioned above.
“There is a phenomenon of impunity. We do not have many opportunities to work under the law (prosecute – BNS) (…) We can certainly see that there is much work in the police in the investigation of these events, but there are few results that satisfy all the needs. If at least half of the completed pre-trial investigations could be subject to administrative responsibility, the result would be really good, “said the investigator.
According to data from the Department of Informatics and Communications, in 2016-2020 there were 163 cases of hate speech in Lithuania.
According to non-governmental officials, hate speech is characterized by “latency”, that is, not reporting it to law enforcement authorities.
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