Hate crime

Germany will impose fines of up to EUR 50 million against "online giants that fail to remove hate speech and fake news reported by users within a week."

Tanjug is reporting this on Wednesday, citing an AFP report, that specified the measure was approved by the German government, that announced it in a statement.

Reports that five car-wash workers were injured when a car ploughed into them in South London on Sunday have worried fellow Romanians working in the UK, amid wider fears of increased racism as the British government continues its preparations to leave the EU.

Hate groups are flourishing across the United States, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Nationwide, the SPLC identified 917 hate groups last year, an increase on 892 in 2015. The number of anti-Muslim groups in particular has risen steeply, almost tripling from 34 in 2015 to 101 in 2016.

Turkey's Association of Protestant Churches has prepared its 2016 Rights Violations Report, noting that hate speech against the country's Christians has increased in both conventional and social media. 

The annual report said hate speech against Protestants persisted throughout 2016, in addition to physical attacks on Protestant individuals and their churches. 

Four suspects facing hate crime charges made their first appearance in a Chicago court this afternoon after they allegedly kidnapped and tortured a man, whom a police official characterized as having “mental health challenges,” while streaming it live on Facebook.

The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) presented a motion for parliament to research the social causes of hate crimes on Nov. 11, state-run Anadolu Agency has reported.

Helsinki Committee leader Krasimir Kanev told BIRN on Thursday that he was attacked at around 9.30am that day in front of the Radisson hotel in Sofia by two unknown men who punched him in the face and stomach and ran away. Police arrived around 15 minutes later, but the attackers had by then fled from the scene.

The Council of Europe's human rights body European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) has reported its concern about increasing hate speech and violence against religious, sexual, and ethnic minority groups in Turkey, indicating that the usage of hate speech by senior representatives of the state was a major concern.  

The Kaos Gay and Lesbian Cultural Research and Solidarity Association (Kaos GL) has published an annual report monitoring human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity, calling on the Turkish state to adopt anti-discriminatory measures to prevent hate crimes against LGBT individuals that remain largely unreported by media and security authorities. 

There has been an upsurge of hate speech in the Bulgarian media, mainly targeting the Roma minority, refugees and migrants, says a study by the Sofia-based Media Democracy and the Centre for Political Modernisation, which was published on Monday.