What happened: The Cyber Crime and Digital Forensics Department at the Ministry of Interior in coordination with the Primary Public Prosecutor’s Office – Skopje pressed criminal charges against B.T. (68) on reasonable grounds that he committed the offence “Endangering the Safety” prescribed and punishable with Article 144, paragraph 4 and “Spreading Racial and Xenophobic Material via an Information System” prescribed and punishable with Article 394-d from the Criminal Code of RNM. Namely, the reported individual posted a status on the social network Facebook with offensive and threatening content against the president of a political party on 13.04.2020.
Brief description of the incident with bias indicators: In this incident the bias motive is political affiliation, with the bias indicators being:
- Political affiliation – the victim and the perpetrator have different political beliefs;
- Pattern of previous incidents – inciting and spreading ethnic hatred and inciting violence on social networks is becoming a more common method of committing hate crimes.
Impact on the victims and the community: These types of incidents call into question the general safety in the country.
