Probation for hate speech written on AJM Facebook page
Today, a court decision was received in favour of the Association of Journalists of Macedonia (AJM) for the case where a comment was written from the profile on the social network Facebook named “Sasho Mitev” under a post on the AJM Facebook page. According to the verdict of the Basic Criminal Court, the person Sasho Mitev is guilty under Article 394-d of the Criminal Code and is sentenced to three months in prison, which will not be executed if he does not repeat the crime within one year after the crime.
He wrote a vulgar, hateful comment on the AJM Facebook page on July 28, 2021, with the following content: “Fuck you journalistic tribe, pussy liars mandatory imprisonment for every journalist who spreads panic for a year and a half, cutting the tongue of every journalist.”
For this comment posted on July 16, 2021, AJM filed a report with the Sector for Computer Crime and Digital Forensics at the Ministry of Interior for spreading racist and xenophobic material following computer systems and for inciting hatred, discord and intolerance against national, racial, religious and other discriminatory grounds.
The AJM request for criminal action argues the fact that such comments are a crime but also further points out that the possible impunity of them opens space and incentive for additional hatred of journalists that can result in violence.
