[David Kaye is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the freedom of opinion and expression. His recommendations form part of this document]
Atheist Ireland has made the following submission to the Department of Justice’s consultation on hate crime and hate speech laws. We recommend that the State should:

• Tackle prejudice against groups through education,
• and tackle prejudice-motivated crime through the law,
• while protecting the right to freedom of expression,
• based on human rights principles and standards.

Contents of this Submission
1. Introduction to Atheist Ireland
2. The Law Should Say ‘Prejudice-Motivated Crime’ Not ‘Hate Crime’
3. The Law Must Not Become a Blasphemy Law by Another Name
4. Tackle Prejudice with Education, Tackle Crime with the Law
5. Tackling Prejudice against Groups through Education and Leadership
6. The Law Should be Based on Human Rights Principles
7. The Rabat Plan of Action
8. Recent UN Special Rapporteur Report on:
(a) Application of Human Rights Law to ‘Hate Speech’
(b) Application of Human Rights Law to Online ‘Hate Speech’
(c) Recommendations for States
(d) Recommendations for Online Companies
9. Police Operational Guidelines in the United Kingdom
10. Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989
11. Conclusion
1. Introduction to Atheist Ireland
Atheist Ireland is an Irish advocacy group. We promote atheism and reason over superstition and supernaturalism, and we promote an ethical, secular society where the State does not support or finance or give special treatment to any religion.
Since being formed in late 2008, we have campaigned for a secular Irish Constitution, parliament, laws, government, and education and healthcare systems. We are part of the dialogue process between the Government and religious and nonreligious philosophical bodies.
We base our policies on human rights standards. We have made submissions to and attended meetings of the United Nations Human Rights Committees and Council, the OSCE, the Council of Europe, and various Government Departments and consultation processes.
As atheists, we empathise with members of other groups who face prejudice and discrimination in Ireland, because we have first-hand experience of it. We also recognise that members of other groups face more frightening hostility in Ireland, including overt harassment, intimidation and violence. We should all stand together to challenge prejudice and hostility against any and all of us, and to protect the values of Western liberal democracy that enable us to do so.
This submission relates both to the review of the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989 and to any new legislation that may be developed on what is often described as hate crime.
2. The Law Should Say ‘Prejudice-Motivated Crime’ Not ‘Hate Crime’
Laws should be accurate, understandable, and enforceable. Their words and definitions should be coherent, universal and inclusive, with clear and justified boundaries, and free from ideological assumptions. A person should be able to know whether or not they are breaking it.
Laws based on ambiguous or emotive words cannot do this. ‘Hate crime’ laws are not about hate. They are fundamentally about prejudice and bias on the basis of being a member of a group with common characteristics. Here are several examples of this concern being raised by experts:

“Reflecting academic suggestions that hate crimes commonly involve bias or prejudice (rather than hate), ODIHR uses the term ‘bias’ in defining the hate crime motivation, rather than the more extreme emotion of ‘hate’. Similarly, Sweden’s National Council for Crime Prevention includes ‘fear, hostility or hate’ in its definition of motivations behind hate crimes, while in the UK the College of Policing’s hate crime guidance, which applies to all 43 police forces in England and Wales, similarly does not use ‘hate’ as its definition but rather the lesser emotions of ‘hostility or prejudice against an identifiable group of people’.”
— Defining Hate Crime Internationally, Jon Garland and Corinne Funnell, Globalisation of Hate, Oxford University Press, p22
“According to Hannah Arendt, ‘words can be relied on only if their function is to reveal and not to conceal’ (1996:66). In that case, the pairing of the two words ‘hate’ and ‘crime’ is notoriously unreliable. There are crimes motivated by genuine hatreds that would never be prosecuted as hate crimes, and the term ‘hate crime’ can cover forms of bias that would never qualify as hatred on any conventional use of the term. However, the ambiguity of ‘hate’ is only one of several forms of confusion about the meaning of ‘hate crime’. Describing it has been described as ‘notoriously difficult’ (Hall 2013:1) and like entering a ‘conceptual swamp’ (Berk, Boyd, and Hammer 2003:51). Definitions abound and consensus seems both improbable and to some degree undesirable.”
— Conceptualising Hatred Globally, Thomas Brudholm, Globalisation of Hate, Oxford University Press, p33
“And what does ‘hate’ signify in this context? Is it an emotion, an attitude, a disposition, or something other? There are some reasons to prefer the terms ‘bias’ and ‘prejudice’ to ‘hate’—they conceptually imply that the attitude is at fault, and they are attitudes connected to groups, not individuals.”
— Hate Crime Concepts and their Moral Foundations, David Brax, Globalisation of Hate, Oxford University Press, p54
“Hate speech constitutes a growing phenomenon around the globe. In order to better address problems linked to hate speech, such as discrimination and the commission of physical hate crimes, policy and lawmakers have tried, unsuccessfully, to define it.”
— How Should We Legislate Against Hate Speech? Viera Pejchal and Kimberley Brayson, Globalisation of Hate, Oxford University Press, p247

Such laws often add to this confusion, by including definitions of ‘hate’ that are clearly not definitions of hate. As two practical examples, the Leicester Hate Crime Project 2014 (Britain’s biggest study of hate crime victimisation), and the ODIHR (which guides OSCE States) use the following definitions: Read more…

Calling concerned teachers

If you are a teacher and concerned about unwanted religious influence contact Chris at teachers@atheist.ie