Democracy entails freedom of expression and the right to protest, but nevertheless it also implies the rule of law and respect for human rights and freedoms.
The direct and indirect calls for violence, hate speech, slander and the accusing of institutions and of neighboring countries for fascism and many other qualifications, such as is the case with the organizers who called for a protest against the Law on use of languages, are all extremely unacceptable. The organizers of this protest, with rude abuse of human rights and freedoms, primarily of the freedom of expression and of the right to protest, are trying to cause inter-ethnic tensions and violence.
Just because they will write on Facebook that they are not taking responsibility for any incidents, does not reduce the legal responsibility for what they are doing. When they organize protests there are regularly beaten members of other ethnic communities or media workers.
CIVIL – Center for Freedom mostly strongly condemns the ultranationalist character of the public appearances and on the social networks that characterize „Tvrdokorni“ and those similar to them.
We call on the citizens to refrain from any violence and hate speech.
We call on the civil society organizations to support our reaction against hate speech and ethnic hatred in the country.
We demand from the institutions to take decisive measures against the perpetrators of hate crimes, as well as against those spreading and encouraging hate speech.