Researching Hate Speech Cases in Croatia – REASON project

• In Event: Hate speech in the online world and beyond

Abstract

Hate speech is a widespread albeit complex phenomenon and within the project entitled “REASON - Improved Response to Hate Speech through Legal Research, Advocacy and Training”,” financed by the European Union through the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme, we aim to expand the knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon of hate speech in Croatia through empirical research.

Hate speech is incriminated as public incitement to violence and hatred in the Croatian Criminal Code and as several misdemeanours. Thus, within the REASON project different types of cases were analysed: cases where the prosecution did not issue an indictment for hate speech but had rather dismissed criminal charges; cases where indictment for hate speech was issued and a final verdict was reached by a criminal court (either conviction or acquittal); and misdemeanour cases derived on the basis of selection of cases from the list of records of misdemeanour cases initially flagged by the police as “hate crimes”. Cases registered by the police and/or prosecution in the period 2016 – 2021, for which the final decision has been rendered, were analysed by combining content analysis of prosecution and court decisions and focus groups with practitioners.

In this paper overview of the REASON project, that introduces a novel intersectional and evidence-based approach to analysing hate speech, will be given. Moreover, preliminary data pertaining to general phenomenology of hate speech in Croatia, but also to specific bias indicators and relevant aspects of prosecution and judicial decisions in view of human rights standards will be presented.

Authors

• Maja Munivrana, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb

• Aleksandar Marsavelski, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb

• Ines Sučić, Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar

• Ivana Eterović, Croatian Law Centre