.jpg)
Police spammed with complaints by neo-Nazis under
new Scottish hate crime law
First minister calls for end to vexatious reports
after far-right agitators attempt to “overwhelm” official systems
Shanti Das,
Home affairs correspondent
Sun 7 Apr
2024 06.00 BST
Neo-Nazi
and far-right agitators are exploiting Scotland’s new hate crime law to make
vexatious complaints en masse in an attempt to “overwhelm” police systems.
A prominent
figure in England’s white nationalist movement is among those urging followers
to spam Police Scotland with anonymous online reports, the Observer has found.
The leader
of a far-right group – one of several fringe organisations being assessed by
the UK government under its new extremism definition – promoted a private
channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram that includes a “call to
action” urging members to “mass report”.
Posts in
the channel instruct members to log cases of supposed “anti-white” hate, which
they say includes a statement on the police force’s website that “young men
aged 18-30 are most likely to commit hate crime”.
“This
public targeting of a group deeply offended us and thus we will report it as a
racially motivated hate crime,” the channel administrator wrote.
Messages
have also been posted directing the group’s 284 members to mass report tweets
from members of the public, including one from a former local councillor who
said that those most impacted by hate crime were “people of colour, disabled
people, LGBT+ people, because it’s probably happened to them”. The
administrator of the “hate crime reporting” group said the message was
“offensive” and “singled out white men as evil”.
“At the
very least, we want to overwhelm them with reports to waste their time [so
that] they eventually give up the whole system,” they wrote, adding that people
could report without using their name and even if they didn’t live in Scotland.
The efforts
by far-right actors to overwhelm Police Scotland comes after a week in which
the country’s new hate crime legislation faced fierce criticism. The law, which
came into force on 1 April, says a person commits a criminal offence if they
communicate material or behave in a way that a “reasonable person would
consider to be threatening or abusive”, with the intention of stirring up
hatred, based on a list of protected characteristics.
These
include someone’s age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender
identity and variations in sex characteristics. It also includes a crime of
stirring up hate based on race, colour or nationality, which was already
illegal but is now part of the new act.
The
Scottish government says the law gives more protection to victims while
protecting free speech. But it has faced controversy for omitting sex from the
list of protected characteristics it covers. Ministers say this is because a
standalone bill tackling misogyny is in the works.
Critics
also claim the law will stifle free speech, with high-profile figures including
JK Rowling, Joe Rogan and Elon Musk among those to have publicly attacked it.
After Holyrood minister Siobhian Brown said people “could be investigated” for
misgendering someone online, Rowling dared police to arrest her over tweets she
posted describing transgender women as men. Police Scotland said the tweets
were not criminal. Yesterday, Rowling posted a 700-word statement on X
outlining her views on gender issues and her concerns that women’s rights are
being “dismantled”.
This
weekend, Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, the leader of the SNP,
defended the legislation, telling the PA news agency that “deliberate
misinformation” was being “peddled by some bad actors” falsely claiming that it
was now a criminal offence to make “derogatory comments” based on the
characteristics covered in the act.
A
government spokesperson added that the law had a “high threshold for
criminality” and would not “prevent people expressing controversial,
challenging or offensive views”.
Yousaf also
warned people against making vexatious complaints. While official figures have
not yet been released, Police Scotland reportedly received nearly 4,000 reports
in the new law’s first three days. Many are understood to have been lodged
against Yousaf himself over comments he made four years ago about a lack of
non-white people in top jobs in Scotland.
The first
minister said he was not surprised by the deluge and that “when legislation is
first introduced there can sometimes be a flurry of vexatious complaints”. But
he said he was “very, very concerned” about how many were being made, adding
that “people should desist because they are wasting valuable police resources
and time”.
Police
Scotland said it had seen a “substantial increase” in reporting since the law
came into effect but that this had not affected frontline policing. It is
understood to have drafted in extra staff, paying them overtime to cope with
demand.
Imran
Ahmed, from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said it was “extremely
ironic” that the law was being “weaponised” by the same racist and misogynistic
“bad actors” that had prompted its creation. He said the flurry of complaints
from far-right activists was proof that the law had “failed to hit the right
target” and that the Scottish government had “sought to prosecute speech”
rather than social media platforms.
“The
problem is the proliferation of hate speech on social media and the ways in
which these platforms profit from, and give superpowers to, every hate group
out there,” he said.
Before the
law came into effect, the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents (ASPS)
warned of its impact on police resources. Ch Supt Rob Hay, president of the
ASPS, said in a letter to Holyrood’s justice committee that he was concerned
the law would be “weaponised” by an “activist fringe” across the political
spectrum which could divert police resources from more serious crimes.
.jpeg)
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário