Regulating hatred: Of devils and demons?
| DOI | 10.1177/1358229118796029 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Author | Natalie Alkiviadou |
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Regulating hatred:
Of devils and demons?
Natalie Alkiviadou
Abstract
Hate speech and hate crime are an anathema to any society. On a United Nations level,
the central tools to tackle such hatred are Article 20(2) of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights and Article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. On a Council of Europe level, the Additional
Protocol to the Cybercrime Convention tackles racist and xenophobic material, threats
and insults as well as revisionist rhetoric transmitted and disseminated through com-
puter systems. On a European Union level, there is the Framework Decision on Racism
and Xenophobia. In none of the above-mentioned instruments do we find provisions on
homophobic and transphobic speech and crime, nor are there equivalents of documents
such as the Framework Decision with the thematic of homophobia and transphobia. This
creates a hierarchy of hate, with some forms of hate considered more important than
others by the aforementioned institutions, a reality that goes against the very essence of
international human rights law.
Keywords
Hate speech, homophobia, transphobia, discrimination, human rights, hate crime
Introduction
Hatred as manifested by hate speech and hate crime is a menace to any society and the
values of equality, respect and solidarity, as enshrined in all international and European
University of Central Lancashire Cyprus, Pyla, Larnaca, Cyprus
Corresponding author:
Natalie Alkiviadou, University of Central Lancashire Cyprus, University Avenue 12-14, Pyla,
Larnaca 7080, Cyprus.
Email: nalkiviadou@uclan.ac.uk
International Journalof
Discrimination and theLaw
2018, Vol. 18(4) 218–236
ªThe Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1358229118796029
journals.sagepub.com/home/jdi
human rights documents. Hate speech and hate crime are interrelated and interconnected,
targeting one or more inherent characteristics of their victims. As such, these phenomena
seek to transmit messages of hatred and intolerance towards such characteristics, thereby
causing harm on three scales, namely, the micro-scale (the victim), the mesoscale (the
victim group) and the macro-scale (society, through, e.g. the deterioration of community
cohesion).
1
There exist several international and European instruments which seek,
directly or indirectly, to deal with hate speech and hate crime. The devastating effects
of World War II prompted the international community to establish infrastructure that
could prevent the reoccurrence of such aggression, hence the birth of international
human rights law as we know it today. The first symbolic movement of the United
Nations (UNs)
2
was the, albeit non-binding, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
which was ‘born out of the experience of the war that had just ended’.
3
Within a
European framework, the Council of Europe was established to promote peace and unity
among its Member States and prevent the reoccurrence of the atrocities witnessed in the
1940s.
4
The two directly relevant documents of the UN, in the sphere of regulating hate
speech, are the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the
International Convention on the Eli mination of All Forms of Racial Discrimin ation
(ICERD) discussed in the following. More recent documents have emanated, on a
European level, and are directly related to hate speech and/or hate crime rather than
falling within the general framework of umbrella phenomena such as racism and xeno-
phobia. These are the Council Framework Decision on combating certain forms and
expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law and the Additional
Protocol to the Cybercrime Convention, concerning the criminalization of acts of a racist
and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems. The striking issue that will
be developed and demonstrated in this article is that the international and European
framework has, from the time of its inception until 2008, the year in which the very
last relevant document was agreed upon, focused solely on certain types of hate speech
and hate crime which target racial and religious groups, with no convention or other
document, to date, prohibiting or regula ting homophobic or transphobic speec h and
crime in any form or way. In the European framework, which serves as the contextual
premise of this article, such speech occurs in contexts such as political debates, debates
concerning Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) rights and events and in state-
ments made by religious figures, with persons often being depicted as ‘unnatural, dis-
eased, deviant, linked to crime, immoral or socially destabilising’.
5
At the same time,
hate crime against LGBT persons is ‘a prevalent phenomenon that has an impact on gay
men, lesbians, bisexual men and women and transgender persons in various ways’.
6
The
above-mentioned reality has resulted in what can be referred to as a ‘hierarchy of hate’,
7
with some forms of hate speech and hate crime simply considered as being more impor-
tant to deal with than others. This article is not conducting a theoretical analysis on if
and/or how hate speech is to be curtailed (or not)
8
nor is it seeking to examine hate crime
models
9
as these issues have already been looked at extensively in scholarly contribu-
tions. Instead, this article is illustrating the aforementioned hierarchy and demonstrating
the inherent malaise in this hierarchy. To this end, the article will look at the (potential)
meanings of hate speech and hate crime, assess the relevant international and European
legal provisions that can be used to tackle these phenomena, consider any positive
Alkiviadou 219
To continue reading
Request your trial