Minority Monitor presents: From Hate Messages to Hate Crimes

In support of FUEN’s MUTE HATE SPEECH campaign, the Minority Monitor project mapped and will continue to map cases of hate speech against minorities in all of its forms – written, verbal, and visual – disseminated through media, online platforms, art, street art, or aggressive acts.

Within just a month after the first call for inputs, eight member organisations from seven countries submitted 40 cases to the Minority Hate Monitor, ranging range from hate speech to assaults and vandalism, all targeting national minorities and/or their members.

FUEN continues to collect cases, which will be published on a rolling basis. Your contribution is crucial in this fight against hate speech. To provide input, please use the following reporting form: https://forms.gle/ZX4bBA1XWehqgeAb7   

The cases were processed and grouped in several thematical lines for reporting purposes. The current article introduces the cases escalating

From Hate Messages to Hate Crimes

Seventeen hate cases were reported to the Minority Monitor by minority organisations from four European states. The number of inputs per country, referring to incidents dated 2015 to 2023, is as follows: Croatia – 3 cases, Greece – 8 cases, Poland – 5 cases, and Romania — 1 case.

Thematically, the majority of the reported incidents refer to displayed hate messages in public places – as graffiti or posters – to offensive emails and insulting letters sent to minority representatives and organisations and racist statements written on walls. However, some cases refer to direct threats – written in direct communication, on banners, or spoken during life broadcasts. One of the most striking incidents of verbally expressed hate, repeated continuously, is the Croatian song “Kill the Serb”.

Among the reported cases, four can be qualified as vandalism, and four as physical acts of aggression against a person or assault. Cases of hate assaults and aggression towards persons for using their different identity, for using their minority language, or just for belonging to a minority community should not only be condemned by the societies at large but also punished by law as criminal offences.

Head over to the Minority Monitor website to read the seventeen cases!