Scottish Hate Crime Bill - information and resources.

https://wingsoverscotland.com/into-darkness/

Interview with Neale Hanvey.

https://twitter.com/JNHanvey/status/1772212924280430632

From The Police Scotland Online Reporting Form for hate crime.

'Description information

Here are a list of things to think about when trying to describe someone.

• Their name.
• Nickname.
• Age.
• Date of birth.
• Address.
• Sex.
• Height.
• Build.
• Hair colour.
• Distinguishing marks.
• Tatoos.
• Occupation.
• Place of work.
• Email address.
• Phone number.
• Anything about them you can think of will be useful.'

https://www.scotland.police.uk/secureforms/c3/

What do they mean, 'sex'? Is this form transphobic?

'Police Scotland has behaved not just outrageously, but unlawfully according to the legal advice obtained by the FSU. This is Police Scotland attacking free speech but it is more sinister than that. My tweet wasn’t pointing a finger at an individual, it was critical of a Scottish Government policy. If police are now treating criticism of SNP policy as hate incidents, that is a really serious issue as it shows how Police Scotland has been captured by the SNP policy agenda.’

On November 18 last year, Mr Fraser shared a column written by Susan Dalgety for The Scotsman, which claimed the SNP Government’s non-binary equality action plan would lead to children being ‘damaged by this cult’.'

An MSP has had a tweet criticising the Scottish government policy recorded as a Non Crime Hate Incident.

If anyone has wondered how this law would be applied, here you go.

Criticise the government at your peril.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13233691/Scots-Torys-police-row-hate-tweet-claim.html

'This is the paradox of the reasonable person confronted by an unreasonable law. Is it reasonable to dismiss a law because you think it is unreasonable? Or do you accept it because it is reasonable to obey the law of the land even if you don’t agree with it? This has always been the dilemma faced by people living in oppressive and authoritarian regimes.'

Anyone can be arrested for anything. The hate is in the perception of the person reporting. So, yes.

Also:

'What bothers me is the chilling and cumulative effect that various pieces of legislation, including this one, have had on women basically because MSPs were either too afraid, too craven, too party political, or too far behind the knowledge curve, that they boxed themselves so far into a corner on what it means to be a man or a woman, that when it came to the census, the forensic examination bill, the representation on public boards bill, the hate crime bill, the rules about transgender prisoners, the use of puberty blockers on children, the debate around trans inclusion in sport, and so it goes on, they were utterly paralysed by their own ignorance and fear, that they, bar some notable exceptions, were unable to enter the fray on anything that smacked of sex and gender. Even when it came to changes in the law.'

I saw someone say recently that the other parties will promise to repeal the HCA.

Will they?

https://www.holyrood.com/editors-column/view,hate-crime-these-laws-offer-no-help-to-women-while-increasing-their-alarm

'The taunting has already begun. Women are already fearful. And the SNP MP Joanna Cherry KC has warned that she has “no doubt” the law “will be weaponised by trans rights activists to try to silence, and worse still, criminalise women who do not share their beliefs”.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/03/scotlands-hate-speech-act-and-abuse-of-process/

Craig Murray, who has been an ambassador, journalist, and also imprisoned by the Scottish Government, on the new Act.

'It is a well-established principle in Scots law that anything published on the internet, which can be read in Scotland, is deemed to be published in Scotland. The act of publication is not deemed to be the person actually publishing the item, let us say in Tahiti. The act of publication is deemed to be the reader opening the item on their device in Scotland.'

Also:

'In addition to holding that Scots courts have jurisdiction over anything published on the internet anywhere in the world, because if it can be read here it is published in Scotland, Scottish judges have also invented the doctrine of “continuing publication”.As it is the act by the reader of opening the matter online which constitutes publication, every time it is opened by someone in Scotland from the internet that constitutes a new publication. So any “hate speech” that has been online for ten years constitutes a new offence if you read it in Scotland now. “Hate speech” as defined in the Act, anywhere on the Internet, no matter when or where it was published, is going to be a new crime in Scotland if someone opens it or reads it after 1 April.'

If that isn't clear, I'll spell it out:

Anything published on the internet, at any time, can be considered a hate crime if anyone perceives it to be so. Police Scotland have committed to investigating every reported Hate Crime.

'Of the millions of people who could be prosecuted for online content read in Scotland, the intention is selectively to attack those who are gender critical.Now I am in fact not gender critical myself. I still find the intolerance puzzling. But I absolutely defend the right of those who are convinced that trans people are a threat to women’s rights to state their position, free from the legal harassment that is about to be unleashed upon them.
What we are seeing is terrible repressive legislation, amplified by a terrible legal doctrine, leading to massive power by the state over individuals. We are going to see monumental abuse of process. The state will take completely arbitrary decisions on selective prosecution according to a state-political agenda, and will refuse to prosecute millions of other “crimes” under the same Act. This is fascism.'

Oh, this is interesting.

'The retired Scottish judge who prepared the independent report which preceded this new hate crime legislation, Lord Bracadale, recommended that there should be a tailored freedom of expression protection for such women in it.'

(The Bill/Act was brought on recommendation of Bracadale's report on hate crimes).

https://archive.is/YflLG

Joanna Cherry KC on the Act .

'OVER the last few days, a succession of men have taken to print and to the airwaves to tell you there is no cause for concern about the new Hate Crime Act coming into force on April 1. One headline even proclaimed concerns were “silly”.
I’m here to tell you that these men are wrong as well as patronising, and that, if you are a woman, you have every right to be concerned. I have no problem with consolidating and updating the existing hate crime aggravators. I believe that if an assault on a gay or a trans person is motivated by hatred of their sexual orientation or their gender reassignment, that should be reflected in the charge and the sentence. When I worked as a senior prosecutor in the High Court, I helped prepare and prosecute such cases.
I am concerned about the creation of the new offence of stirring up hatred against the protected characteristic of transgender identity. Not only is the offence vague but the characteristic is very widely drawn. For example, it extends beyond people who identify as trans to include cross-dressing men.

I’ll explain more below but first get this – biological sex is not included as a protected characteristic in the Act, despite women being one of the most abused cohorts in our society. This means that cross dressing men will be better protected under the law of Scotland than women.'

IANAL, and this law has yet to be tested.

The definition rests on the perception of the person reporting (not necessarily the victim). There's no criteria or threshold or examples given (other than the 'reasonable person' reference) so it's unknown if a misgendering would be prosecuted. It would be investigated, given that the polis have committed to investigating every report.

And there is a defence of freedom of expression. So that might help.

Who the fuck knows, really. The law itself is very vague. So it probably comes down to individual police officers and judges. Good luck, and god help us all!

We don't really have deed polls in Scotland.

It all seems a bit vague, tbh. You just pay £40 and change it.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/scotland/family/birth-certificates-and-changing-your-name-s/changing-your-name-s/

For anyone interested in Thomas Aikenhead, I can rec the fabulous book Unspeakable by Dilys Rose.

https://gript.ie/scottish-police-watchdog-hate-speech-law-may-have-chilling-effect-on-free-speech/

'The Chair of the Scottish Police Authority’s watchdog has said that the controversial hate crime law, which will come into effect on April 1st, risks having a “chilling effect” on freedom of speech.
Katharina Kasper, chairwoman of the Scottish Police Authority’s complaints and conduct committee, said at a Police Authority meeting that: “The concerns that have been expressed are that by the time an allegation is made and an investigation starts, the process itself can become a punishment which may have a chilling effect on the freedom of expression”.
She told Chief Constable of Police Scotland, Jo Farrell, that “credible voices across the judicial sector and human rights organisations” do not believe that sufficient safeguards have been put in place to protect freedom of speech, according to a report in The Times.

...
A legal analysis of the bill published by the Scottish law firm Lindsays said that while “the Scottish government says it is designed to make hate crime law “fit for the 21st century”, Scottish, English and European lawyers “believe the bill provides for an alarming expansion of state power,”.
Francis Hoar, a barrister practising in public law and human rights, said that the bill removes the need for the perpetrator to have shown an intention to “hate” in order to be indicted. “The only exception is if there is a ‘reasonable excuse’ – but no one can know how a court would interpret that”, he said.
“Law should be certain and the citizen should know what conduct is or is not criminal” says Brent Haywood, a partner at Lindsays. “As framed this proposed new law has the potential to be used politically in a climate of increasing virtue signalling”, he noted.
“More alarmingly still, it undermines the distinction between public and private settings, meaning statements made in private conversations could be criminalised,” the analysis found.'

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/03/20/r-i-p-the-scottish-enlightenment-1697-2024/

A view giving some historical context.

The Hate Crime Act repeals blasphemy as an offence, ironically.