Record-breaking punishment for a comment urging for national hatred among EFHR’s victories

For years, the European Foundation of Human Rights (EFHR) has been running a campaign based on monitoring the Internet and looking for contents  based on discrimination and hatred.

In total, the number of our won law-suits amounts to 40, but none of these can be compared to the verdict reached by the District Court of the Mariampolis Region. For urging national hatred, this time towards the citizens of the Polish nation, V.V.- a Lithuanian citizen, has to pay 3900 Lt.

On the information portal www.lrytas.lt, under the article ”Warsaw nationalists will go to defend the Polish people of Vilnius” (lt. „Varšuvos nacionalistai vyks ginti Vilniaus lenkų“), published on the 3^rd March 2012, V.V., nicknamed ”Proto”, placed a comment: ”They come to defend??? We have to start destroying them right now, so that there will be no one to defend, some will escape to Poland, some won’t, but a Lithuanian can’t defend himself, because all he can do is to attack others”.

The next day, this time as ,,620.100”, he wrote as follows: ,,You donkeys say they ain’t gonna stop at the border, it’s not 15^th century anymore, I mount my horse and go wherever I want, can you imagine what’d happen if he didn’t stop, you clown, if I were a policeman, I would shoot without warning, if the riots broke out, there would simply be war. Who would attack Lithuania then, Poles-shitheads, they must be destroyed, they cry that Lithuanians were shooting Poles, this means we haven’t shot enough. What has been started, has to be finished.” Both comments were decided by the court to be inciting violence and physical attacks against the Poles.

V.V’s answer for the offences he was charged with was that he had not aimed at urging for physical violence against Polish people and, moreover, the comment had been written while he was infuriated.

EFHR is the most active non-governmental organization fighting against comments inciting hatred. The Foundation’s aim is to spread the knowledge that every commentator is individually and directly responsible for what they have written and, in case the content is discriminatory and incites hatred, they can be called to account on a legal basis. Freedom of speech in democratic countries should not destroy, but support tolerance and mutual understanding among the representatives of different nationalities, denominations or social groups.

EFHR

Translated by Katarzyna Piskorz within the framework of a traineeship programme of the European Foundation of Human Rights, www.efhr.eu