16/09/2019
FSG
Madrid, 16 September 2019. This morning, a young Malaga-born IT worker was tried after being identified in a court investigation as the voice behind a website containing anti-Roma hate discourse. The page, which has since been taken offline, was entitled “Gypsy hate page” and included explicit messages that qualified as the criminal offences of inciting hate and discrimination, dehumanising Roma people, including: “Why do we hate gypsies? Because honestly, they deserve it. This is a semi-human race (or not human at all, you might say).. for as long as the world has existed, gypsies have stolen, treated others like shit, marginalised themselves and blamed others...we don't have to put up with it. They are the cause of this plague”.
Fundación Secretariado Gitano reported the website to the public prosecutor in 2012, and was represented in the hearing by Edurne de la Hera, legal counsel of the FSG’s Department for Equal Treatment and Non-discrimination. During the hearing, the court heard the impact that the spreading of this kind of messages has on the Roma community, fostering and multiplying discriminatory and stigmatising stereotypes that can incite serious violence against Roma people.
Isidro Rodríguez, Director General of Fundación Secretariado Gitano, said the hearing was a positive step: “Irrespective of the outcome of this trial, the fact that it has been held is great news, because of the clear message it sends to those who spread anti-Roma online hate speech: that this—sadly widespread—behaviour does not go unpunished.” In 2018 alone, FSG reported 109 cases of extreme anti-Roma discourse on various online social media outlets.
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