31st December 2021
2021 was a challenging year for the Office of the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson. One of these challenges was the efforts that were put in addressing a negative phenomenon of hate speech in Lithuania. Even though hate speech, as such, is not the ‘usual’ topic for the Office’s experts, as a form of discrimination it allowed to address the issue of hate speech from our perspective, implementing projects #HATEFREE and #NoPlace4Hate definitely had its benefits to both the employees and the general public.
In spring, the Office together with its partners started an awareness raising campaign “Hate Speech is a Crime”. The main aim was to address the issue of hate speech by showing that hate speech is considered to be a criminal offence for a reason. Online victim support and information hub “Nepyka.lt” was launched and it was promoted with public awareness ads on national TV, radio, billboards and social media. The whole campaign was based on the public survey on prevalence and recognition of hate speech.
It is important to note that the campaign required a lot from our employees, as the spring was also marked by an increase of hate-speech comments on social media, especially addressed against LGBT* persons. Therefore while carrying out the campaign the employees had themselves to deal with a lot of very unethical, disturbing comments and sometimes even threats.
The platform “Nepyka.lt” also redirects people to a site that can be used to report a hate comment or a hate crime to the police and / or NGO monitoring these phenomena.
Autumn was marked with Lithuanian experts discussing various challenges for reporting and an study visit to Norway’s institutions and organisations that dealt with hate speech and hate-motivated crimes. Lithuania was represented by delegates from the Office, the Office of the Inspector of Journalistic Ethics, Lithuanian Police and human rights advocates from local NGOs.
On 10th of December, Human Rights Day, the Office of the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson organised three discussions on combating and recognising various forms of hate speech and hate crimes. These events were a part of the annual National Human Rights Forum, that was held at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Discussions were broadcasted online and its videos could be found on “YouTube”:
Bullying and Hate Speech: Differences, Interfaces and Harm
Law enforcement against hate: practice and systematic changes that could be made
Why are there “no” hate crimes against persons with disability?
At the end of the year, the Office of the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson began an internal awareness raising campaign within law enforcement structures. Together with public enterprise “Nomoshiti” the Office created and published an awareness raising video on investigating hate crimes and hate speech. It has been followed by a series of specialised press releases explaining the consequences of hate speech.
1000 informational and motivational packages will be sent out to policemen, policewomen and law enforcement officials in the beginning of 2022.
The article is a part of the project “#NoPlace4Hate: Improving Institutional Response to Hate Speech in Lithuania”. The “#NoPlace4Hate” is partially funded by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme of the European Commission (Project Agreement No. 875127 — LGKT_HS — REC-AG-2019 / REC-RRAC-RACI-AG-2019. The European Commission is not responsible for any usage of the information published in the article).