Belgrade 22 May 2022
PUBLIC STATMENT
HATE SPEECH ON WEBSITES IS DANGEROUS!
ESPECIALLY IF IT IS A GOVERNMENT WEBSITE!
Forum for Security and Democracy once again strongly condemns the use of the Ministry of internal affairs for the promotion of political and personal opinions of Aleksandar Vulin and expresses its utmost concern regarding the silence of the public and politicians alike on this issue while making a public appeal for the condemnation of such practices and behavior.
FSD is appalled at the new misuse of the ministry’s website, this time through the spreading of hate speech and national intolerance, which is something that shouldn't be standard practice in any government institution, especially if it already has elements of a criminal offense.
FSD finds it especially inadmissible and dangerous to use the ministry website to promote the words of the minister and the leader of the Socialist movement(sic!) at its head, which slander the Albanian national minority by labeling them as “Shiptars” and characterizing them as “dogs of war and cannon fodder”!
FSD reminds that the High court in Belgrade has passed a verdict in 2018 (in the case of Anita Mitic v. Informer) in which it concluded that the use of the word “shiptar” in public speech is hate speech and also reminds the public of the fact that so far only citizen Aleksandar Vulin has been given a “pass” on this prohibition when he was sued by the National Council of the Albanian Minority while he was the active defense minister.
When the Court of appeals dismissed that lawsuit in 2021, in a decision that diverged from the established court practice that the word “shiptar” is not protected by the freedom of speech, this “pass” was made official – and has also paved the way towards raising the question of the degree to which the court authorities are independent of the executive branch and the extent to which said government officials are exempt from any kind of accountability – even when they are endangering the constitutional order of Serbia.
It is FSD’s view that this new outburst by minister Vulin cast an unnecessary, dangerous, and excessively damaging shadow over the electoral success of the Serbian progressive party, with which Vulin’s Socialist movement is in a coalition, and further undermines the already strained dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina.
Concurrently, the fact that at this very moment the Ministry of internal affairs – a department whose one main task is the suppression of criminality – is being used as a platform for the spreading of hate speech which is punishable by the Criminal code of Serbia is an urgent indicator of how important it is to conclude the electoral process which started on April 3rd, 2022 and to form a new government as quickly as possible in which the use of hate speech would not be standard practice and the use of the ministry as a noticeboard for political self-promotion and unsanctioned hate speech – a relic of the past.
