Hate Speech in Asia and Europe by Kang Myungkoo; Rivé-Lasan Marie-Orange; Kim Wooja

Author:Kang, Myungkoo; Rivé-Lasan, Marie-Orange; Kim, Wooja
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2020-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Hate speech in Japan, South Korea and France: analysis, social policy and legislation 2013–2015

Between 2013–15 a series of incidents in Japan, South Korea and France intensified debates on hate speech policy. In Japan hate speech incidents often taken the form of protests against the zainichi, Koreans resident in Japan. In South Korea hate speech debates stem from a different experience of migration, in which concerns for anti-Korean discrimination in Japan are coupled with the growing awareness of hate speech against a range of marginalized groups in Korea, including women, the elderly, LBGT people and Chinese migrant labourers (Salmon, 2014; Lee, 2017). In France Holocaust revisionism often fuels hate speech incidents, whilst the 2015 Paris terrorists attacks increased debates about the right balance to set between hate speech bans and rights to freedom of speech (Stille, 2015). The immediate responses to the 2013–2015 incidents in each country highlight the differences between the three states in how hate speech is manifested and the scale and severity of the policy responses.

In France, hate speech was already part of the legal code in 2013. Free speech, and the abolition of blasphemy, dates back to the 1792 Declaration of Rights (Lefebvre, 2009). Although freedom of speech was a defining feature of the French Revolution, no absolute right to free speech, such as the US First Amendment, exists. Anti-discrimination laws curb the freedom of expression. Post-Revolution press laws outlawed discrimination based on race, religion or nationality. Freedom existed to attack ideas but not to attack people. (Stille, 2015). The anti-Semitic prejudice that had undermined equality during the 1890 Dreyfus Affair in the Third Republic persisted during the twentieth century. In the 1990s restrictions on freedom of expression continued to be imposed where the Republic’s fundamental value of equality was threatened. Holocaust denial was criminalized in France in the Gayssot Act 1990. Findings of revisionism, in Holocaust denial cases in M’Bala M’Bala v France1 and findings of incitement to racial discrimination in Soulas and Others v France,2 both showed that French hate speech law can prioritize Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which prohibits the abuse of rights, over Article 10, ECHR, which protects rights to free expression. However, the compulsory silence in schools to commemorate the victims of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack, suggested that rights to freedom of opinion and expression in the French state did not extend to the rights of pupils to contest the aims and purposes of the commemoration (Stille, 2015). Hate speech, already on the French criminal code, was moved to the penal code after 2015 in a reform intended to prevent the celebration of terrorism, but which critics feared might distract from the reform of structural inequalities required to end racist and anti-Semitic discrimination (Chrisafis, 2015).

In contrast, neither Japan nor South Korea had hate speech legislation in 2013. In Japan the first hate speech legislation introduced as civil law in 2016. Discrimination against Koreans resident in Japan, directed in 2013 at Koreans attending the zainichi schools which sustain Korean language and culture in Japan, is not new.

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