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Status: 01.12.2021 6:00 a.m.
The action against insults and threats should be made more effective by the law against hatred on the Internet. But prosecutors complain NDR researchthat politicians often do not support such investigations.
High-ranking prosecutors with a focus on hate crime on the Internet are demanding more support from MPs in libel proceedings. “It is very unfortunate for us when at the end of a complex investigation we have to find that the offended or slandered person rejects the necessary criminal complaint on which we are dependent,” says the Göttingen chief public prosecutor Frank-Michael Laue NDR.
The Koblenz attorney general Jürgen Brauer became even clearer. “We would like,” he appeals to politicians, “that the authorizations would be granted in any case.” Both expressed themselves in interviews for the NDR documentary “Hate on the Net: On the Road with Prosecutors”.
The background is online comments with criminal content, which lead to proceedings after research by the Federal Criminal Police Office, for example, or which have to be passed on to criminal prosecutors in the course of the new law against hate online by the media as soon as they are noticed by the editors on their online pages .
“Don’t even ignore it!”
In one of the documented cases, the State Criminal Police Office in Mainz found the author of an online post that insulted the incumbent Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble, CDU, for his physical disability and at the same time indicated the desire for a new assassination attempt. Schäuble has been dependent on a wheelchair since an attack on him in 1990.
To NDR information the investigation was stopped because Schäuble had not filed the necessary criminal complaint. The office of the incumbent President of the Bundestag announced on request that Schäuble had decided for himself not to “allow personal insults to come to me”. Instead, he sticks to the motto: “Don’t even ignore it!”
Other politicians, including the incumbent Chancellor, are loud among prosecutors NDR as very cautious when it comes to the prosecution of the necessary criminal charges, although the parliament wanted to set an example in the fight against online hate speech with the new law against hatred on the net.
“In fact, many people still believe that they are on the Internet in a lawless area,” explains Dresden public prosecutor Nicole Geisler. But that is a fallacy.
The film “Hate on the Net: On the Move with Prosecutors” will run on December 6th at 10:50 pm in the series “Die Story im Erste”. The film can be seen in the ARD media library from December 1st.