While the judicial investigations into the attack once morest the vice president are accelerating Cristina Kirchner at the door of his apartment in Recoleta, from Kirchnerism is accentuating at this time the debate regarding the need for a law that regulates “hate speech”whom the Government relates to some media and opposition policy.
The Kirchner senator Jose Mayans; the head of the Inadi, Victoria Donda; the presidential spokeswoman Gabriela Cerruti and presidential adviser Alexander Grimson They expressed themselves over the weekend in relation to the “need” for this new legislation, which for some of them recognizes the questioned one as a valid precedent hate lawapplied by the president of Venezuela Nicholas Maduroand seriously questioned by the opposition, while other referents lean towards a law inspired by European experiences.
“There are people who sit on a television program, stigmatize you and there is no way to defend yourself,” said Mayans – who also called for Cristina’s re-election and to stop Vialidad’s trial – in statements to Radio 10, and immediately alluded to Venezuelan law. A while later, and on the same station, Maduro himself defended that lawwhich dates back to 2017, stating that it promotes society to “enter the battle of ideas”, especially as opposed to social networks.
“There are journalists with names and surnames who are very central necessary participants in the construction of hate in Argentina and who make a self-criticism and that speech that generates one or two more rating points has profound social consequences, discourses that generate other discourses of persecution, expulsion and extermination”Cerruti agreed on Saturday, from Congress, in dialogue with LN+.
The criminal terms and figures that are applied in the “law once morest hate” in Venezuela “are so broad and vague that any expression can be framed within this figure, which grants wide discretion to interpret the norm.” This is stated by the NGO Espacio Público in the report published in May 2021 on the use of the rule promoted by Chavismo in 2017.
“The vagueness of its content encourages arbitrariness in its application by officials, which promotes the abuse of power and human rights violations.”, insists the report, which warns regarding the “inhibitory effect” of the norm on “the already scarce democratic spaces” in Venezuela. Among a total of 60 victims identified in these three years, the main ones are “public and health workers with eighteen (18), media workers, with sixteen (16), ten individuals, nine activists and members of NGOs, five that involve infocitizens and the general population, and two media outlets”, adds the NGO.
“The journalists and the leadership have a social role that entrusts them with a democratic responsibility; you can’t play the innocent or the surprised”, Donda wrote in a column published by Infobae. “That is why it is urgent for us as a society to have a legal tool that sanctions these discursive constructions. It exists in France. It exists in Germany. It should exist in Argentina,” said the official.
In the case of Grimson, the political scientist and adviser stated that “Argentina has to make progress in limiting hate speech in order to achieve democratic coexistence without violence” and argued that this should “be translated into a law or a set of laws.” as other countries have done. According to government sources, Grimson is targeting the case of Angela Merkelthe German chancellor who promoted legislation ” once morest extremist speech” during a memorable presentation before the German parliament, in which she argued that “freedom of expression has its limits, which begin when hate is spread.”
From the Government they assure that the ideas are “under debate”, and that the bill that emerged – there is still none presented in Congress – “should come out by consensus with the opposition, because a new democratic agreement is at stake in the country” following the attack once morest the vice president. In any case, they were skeptical regarding eventual support from the “hawks” of Together for Change and did express their “hope” for eventual support from the UCR.
