PROSECUTION OF HATE CRIME AND HATE SPEECH IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Keywords:
hate crime, incitement to hatred, Article 19, judiciary practice, Bosnia and HerzegovinaAbstract
Purpose:
Given the fact that existing legal provisions in B&H can lead to inadequate responses on the occurrences of hate speech and hate crime we conducted research of approaches of B&H's judiciary in solving those crimes through critical analyzes of existing case law in all four jurisdictions in B&H from 2012. to 2022. with absolute sample of hate crime and hate speech court cases.Analysis was conducted by using the six elements test - the Article 19 aiming to establish threshold of criminal liability on a case-by-case basis.
Findings: After an in-depth analysis of 47 court case in a ten-year period (where 8 were classified as hate crime and 39 as incitements to hatred) the authors came to the conclusion that approximately 77% of all cases indicted for incitement to hatred do not reach a necessary threshold. This very high percent of incorrectly qualified cases leads us to the conclusion that most of the practitioners (prosecutors, lawyers, and judges) do not understand the very concept of hate crime and hate speech.
Originality/Value:
Misapplication of the provision of incitement to hatred for prosecuting cases of a hate speech that does not represent incitement to hatred or that are a hate crime cases, raise the question of legal security and ability of professionals to recognize, identify and react on a true case of the incitement to hatred. Adequate legal and social response to hate speech and hate crime has wide repercussions on the entire B&H's society and therefore the state must respond to those harmful behaviours in a legally correct manner. Therefore, based on the results of conducted research and identified problems the authors created recommendations that can lead to overcoming the identified issues.
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