A strategic approach would be useful in the fight against hate speech, said the executive director of Action for Human Rights Tea Gorjanc Prelevic, adding that more work must be done to educate the authorities to remove that speech from the public space.
At the international conference "Media Horizons: Future Challenges", organized by the Agency for Electronic Media (AEM), Gorjanc Prelević said that hate speech is not the only prohibited content, but also that there is a lot of ignorance and misunderstanding of what hate speech represents in public discourse.
At the panel "Future from the point of view of AVM users", she said that one should be aware of the negative wider reach of hate speech, and that it is problematic that those responsible for processing such speech in Montenegro are not always aware of what is prohibited.
Gorjanc Prelevic stated that competent authorities react in criminal proceedings only to the most serious forms of hate speech, while the majority of cases are limited to warnings and remain unrecognized.
"We must work harder to educate all the people who have the authority and responsibility to remove this harmful speech from the public space - you who work in regulatory media agencies, the police who process misdemeanor reports. There are also many lawyers who do not know enough", said Gorjanc Prelevic.
She said that the HRA submitted an initiative to the government of Zdravko Krivokapić for the adoption of the Strategy for Suppressing Hate Speech, bearing in mind that the Constitution prohibits all forms of hatred and intolerance, but also since a strategic approach is necessary.
"That initiative was not taken into consideration, it was probably considered unnecessary, but I think that a strategic approach would be very useful", stated Gorjanc Prelevic.
She said that adopting a strategy implies a cross-sectional analysis of the situation, which would be an incentive to look at what exists in the system, how that system works in practice and why there is still so much hate speech, violence between children and arguments in public space.
Milan Todorovic from the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media of Serbia said that freedom of expression is regulated by many international conventions, acts and constitutions of all modern countries.
"I am afraid that, from the forest of strategies, initiatives and laws, institutions and society as a whole will not be overwhelmed by strategies and regulation and lose the main focus on what it should protect", said Todorović.
He stated that in the period of hyper-information and hyper-technological revolution, basic solutions should be established that do not allow the rules to be time-limited.
"Laws are quickly overcome technologically, they become useless and unproductive. I believe that the symbiosis of the participants in society comes to the fore, if we were to inherit beliefs and principles that we would manage to protect. But they should be selected from the forest of regulations and rules", Todorović said.
He assessed that it is necessary to work cyclically and establish a foundation by foundation, in order to build a society without hate speech, which thinks freely and expresses itself freely.
Jovan Ulićević from the non-governmental organization Spektra /Spectra/ said that he agrees that, apart from hate speech, other forms of harmful speech should also be spoken.
"If we fuchnicize in the false dichotomy "freedom of speech - hate speech", we remain limited in not dealing with all the harmful forms of speech that have been living in the public space for a long time and which lead to the normalization of numerous harmful practices", said Ulićević.
He said that society is going through an intense process of desensitization, where citizens are faced with strong pressure to close their eyes to all harmful forms of speech in public space, including various relativizing narratives that are not necessarily legally recognized.
According to his words, society is faced with an organized and coordinated attempt to build an alternative order that promotes hierarchy and "anything but democracy" and that makes great use of existing democratic mechanisms and procedures.
"We are constantly in a defensive position, trying to preserve the existing institutions and democratic mechanisms that are being abused a lot, and I'm afraid that we don't discuss enough how we can offer an alternative to the existing structures of the system," Ulićević said.
Kristina Mihailović from the NGO Parents from the NGO Parents said that it is extremely worrying that the parents themselves do not have enough knowledge or awareness about hate speech and general media literacy.
"This is our message to the regulators and the institutions of the system - no matter how difficult it is, and I know it is, we really have to educate and raise awareness specifically of those situations that will help parents understand how much damage it causes to our children and then to society as a whole", Mihailović stated.
She said that there is an extremely small number of people who understand the importance of their role as parents, teachers or anyone with whom children come in contact to present them with values that will develop democracy, enable them to end arguments in an argumentative manner and not enter into conflicts.
Mihailović stated that it is not true that violence has always been there, but that it is now more visible because of the media.
"This is not true. There is much more violence and different forms of violence than ever, and we, on the other hand, are much more tolerant of that violence. It would be good to make people aware that our role is crucial - whether we are from NGOs, institutions or parents", said Mihailović.
Lea Cengic from the Regulatory Agency for Communications of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) stated that it is questionable how much citizens really distinguish what is hate speech, since there is often a misunderstanding of the complexity of that term and other factors that influence it, even in professional communities.
She said that it is worrying that only 50 percent of citizens report hate speech when they recognize it on social networks.
As Čengić pointed out, there is additional space for the engagement of regulators and various actors in society.
"I think that we, as regulators, have to get serious and see what is the best mode of cooperation with other institutions, in order to coordinate a joint response to these phenomena," Čengić believes.
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