Incitement to hatred, violence or discrimination, based on prejudice, will be criminally and contraventionally punished. A draft law that adjusts the legislation in this regard has been consulted within the Legal Committee for appointments and immunities, jointly with the Committee for human rights and inter-ethnic relations.
According to the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice, Veronica Mihailov-Moraru, intentional actions, public exhortations, actions for disseminating information or other forms of public information punishable by the future law, will be penalized with a fine ranging from 500 to 600 conventional units, unpaid community work ranging from 180 to 240 hours or with a one to three years prison sentence. However, the secretary of state said that, as an exception, the law does not consider hatred based on prejudice "actions taken as part of the public discourse or debate with a reasonable and objective justification for religious, educational, scientific, political or other issues of public interest, including the case of peaceful protests".
The activists and the representatives of the NGOs present at the public debates were dissatisfied with the existence of an exception, mentioning that the public discourse mostly takes place in the situations provided by the exception. Nadejda Htriptievschi, a lawyer at the Legal Resource Center, said that the exception should not be part of the law.
Dumitru Slusarenco, a Promo-LEX expert, said that by including the exception, an abusive interpretation of criminal law cannot be avoided. "By including the exception we will do nothing but cancel the effect of this rule. Speech that falls under the category of free speech is not hate speech", said the expert.
Mihai Cotorobai, said that in his capacity of People's Advocate he often encounters hate speech reports, which, if not penalized, can lead to serious consequences. According to the ombudsman, hate speech occurs even in election campaigns and responsible bodies can do nothing about it because the current legislation does not provide punishment. He believes that this bill needs to be voted into law as soon as possible.
Angela Frolov, Genderdoc-M Information Center representative, asked whether the repeated use of hate speech would aggravate the punishment. Additionally, she asked whether political persons or political parties would be able to pay off the fines and continue to employ hate speech. In response, the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice, Veronica Mihailov-Moraru, said that a graduated penalty would be applied.
