Civil society organizations request the Parliament’s legal commission for appointments and immunities to finalize the draft law that regulates prejudice-motivated crimes (for the second reading) and to accept amendments that would increase the responsibility of the players that resort to hate crime and would enable to efficiently fight bias-motivated crimes, IPN reports.

In a public call, the signatory organizations ask to supplement the Contravention Code’s provisions concerning offenses that affect the political, labor and other constitutional rights of the private individuals by adding an article entitled “Instigation of discrimination”. The fine for this offense is proposed to be set at 3,000 to 4,000 lei for private individuals and at 6,000 to 10,500 lei for persons holding responsible posts. The responsibility for punishing the offenses set down by the proposed norm will be borne by the Council for Preventing and Eliminating Discrimination and Ensuring Equality.

During the past two years, civil society has warned that hate crime and instigation of discrimination have been more often used in political and religious contexts. By two cases a day on average were recorded in the public sphere in 2018, but in 2019 the number rose to 4.2 cases a day.  The authors of most of those cases were male politicians (87%), representatives of the Orthodox Church, journalists, opinion leaders.

Among the 23 signatory organizations and authorities are the Council for Preventing and Eliminating Discrimination and Ensuring Equality, the Promo-LEX Association, the Legal Resources Center of Moldova, the National Coalition “Life without Violence in the Family”, the Gender Equality Platform and others. The call remains open for signature.