Through the amendments to the BiH Election Law from 2022 adopted by the OHR, “hate speech” was added to the law, which is defined as any form of public expression or speech that causes or incites hatred, discrimination or violence against any person or group of persons, on the basis of race, color, nationality, sex or religion, ethnic origin or any other personal characteristic or orientation that incites discrimination, hostility and violence.
Although these amendments introduced some improvements, the time frame to apply these provisions is not sufficient in order to effectively address this issue. According to the opinion of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, hate speech cannot be punished under the Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina beyond the 30-day time period, which is duration of the election campaign.
Inappropriate speech, content or speech that can encourage religious, national or bigotry on other grounds, most often belonging to a political option, was recorded in 45 cases in 23 municipalities/cities. Most of the cases refer to the latter, extremely inappropriate speech or bigotry based on political affiliation where, especially on social networks, through bots, fake profiles and the like, a lot of effort is invested in defaming candidates or political opponents.
In addition, through a one-month media monitoring the Coalition “Pod lupom” recorded that in the period before the 2022 General Election hate speech appeared in 8.3% of the monitored portal’s content and in 11% of the monitored content of central-news programs. Although hate speech is punishable by the law, in most cases, there was no strong reaction by journalists.
The Coalition “Pod lupom” believes that hate speech used by political subjects should be punishable under the BiH Election Law also beyond the election campaign period, which officially lasts 30 days prior to the election.
