20 Jul Promotion of the Draft-Declaration against hate speech
On Friday, July 20th, The coalition “ Sexual and health rights of the marginalized communities” in the space of the GEM club has held a press conference about the presentation of the Draft- Declaration against hate speech in the Parliament of Republic of Macedonia by the Liberal party member of the parliament, Ivon Velickovski in cooperation with the Coalition.
The Draft-Declaration was promoted by the member of parliament, Ivon Velickovski, Zarko Trajanoski (human rights consultant of the Coalition), Mirjana Najcevska (human rights expert) and Irena Cvetkovic (project coordinator of the Coalition).
Zarko Trajanoski has said that the marginalized communities, especially the LGBT population and the drug users are exposed the most to hate speech in the media, on the Internet, but in the political debates. That’s why, Trajanoski has urged the Parliament to accept a declaration in which will be explicitly mentioned the groups which are most frequently exposed to hate speech, but are not considered and named in the law. Trajanoski has pointed out that the recent rule of the European Court of Human rights hate speech on the basis of sexual orientation is characterized as a problem that is as serious as the hate speech based on race and color of the skin.
Prof. Najcevska gave support for the Draft-Declaration against hate speech by saying that hate speech doesn’t represent freedom of speech. All of the documents for the protection of human rights have an article in which it limit the ways of use of the rights in order not to violate the human rights of the other.
The Member of Parliament, Ivon Velickovski, said that he will make sure that the Declaration will be accepted with consensus by the Parliament, because the Parliament is the institution out of which hate speech should be removed.
On the promotion of the Draft-declaration, the Member of Parliament Liljana Popovska gave a public support of this initiative by saying that the acceptance of the Declaration will help in raising the level of the Macedonian legislative and bringing it closer to the legislative of the EU.
The Draft-declaration against hate speech is available on the Web site of the Parliament of Republic of Macedonia.