CIVIL most strongly condemns the attacks, slanders and threats that these days Konstantin Plevnes, Professor at ЕСРА, has referred to Professor Katerina Kolozova and her friends. Even more so because this behaviour of Plevnes is something that continuously goes unpunished.

We demand from the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Interior to act immediately upon the reports of the affected persons. We remind that impunity of such acts additionally encourages perpetrators of repeating their truly disgusting acts, which from hate speech can easily turn into hateful actions!

We urge the competent authorities to recognise the seriousness of these actions and to most urgently sanction those who allow themselves to harass and publically humiliate anyone.

We remind that the entire case is receiving a different dimension also because it concerns public figures, in this case a professor, who should be an example for the students. Encouraging the spread of hate speech, cyber bullying and slanders is unacceptable for an academic.

Unfortunately, the monitoring of CIVIL as an organization for human rights, has concluded that a huge number of public figures use hate speech and encourage the public to do the same. The institutions must take all necessary measures in order to sanction this, and thus also reduce the abuses on the social networks by, primarily, public figures.

We call on the citizens to encourage themselves and to report cases of hate speech on the social networks. They can do this on our form for reporting hate speech, but also at the competent institutions such as the MOI and Public Prosecutor’s Office.

CIVIL Communication Team