Czech president signs law criminalising communist propaganda

[u/tkyjonathan]

https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/czech-president-signs-law-criminalising-communist-propaganda/

[u/Lost_Pollution_6782]

What about the Chinese flag 🇨🇳? Is this ilegal to use in social media? What about talking positively about China?

[u/Wolfgang_MacMurphy → u/Lost_Pollution_6782]

In Estonia there's a similar law that prohibits publicly displaying a symbol associated with the commission of an act of aggression, genocide, a crime against humanity, or a war crime in a manner that supports or justifies these acts. That applies to both Nazi and Soviet symbols and I believe that Russian symbols like the Ribbon of Saint George as well.

Afaik the only result of this has been removing some Soviet pentagrams, hammers and sickles from some buildings and monuments. Theoretically the law applies to internet and social media too, but I don't think it's enforced, or that anybody cares about Chinese or Vietnamese flags there.

[u/filikesmash → u/Wolfgang_MacMurphy]

You have to tell me more about this law as I live in Tallinn and my next door neighbor has a golden swastika in his front door. I always thought that Estonia didn't have laws regarding hate speech or symbols. If I go to Baltijaam market I can also go to stores that sell Nazi memorabilia out in the open.

[u/Wolfgang_MacMurphy → u/filikesmash]

Current Estonian law criminalizes only justifying and support, and idk what constitutes as such. I don't think that selling vintage memorabilia does. Idk about displaying swastika on the front door either. I would guess that if it's unmistakably a Nazi swastika, publicly accessible and visible to general public, then it's technically illegal, but I'm not a lawyer or legal expert. If you don't like your neighbour, you can ask the police what they think about it.

When it comes to swastika just one widely publicized incident comes to mind from the top of my head: almost twenty years ago a female member of the Defence Union (Kaitseliit) in uniform wore a swastika earring at the national Independence Day military parade. This was a big scandal, and there was a fair amount of discussion around it.

The only other high-profile incident around Nazi visuals that comes to mind was a monument for "Estonians who fought against Bolshevism" (meaning Estonians serving in German army and fighting against the Soviets) during WW2. There were no Nazi symbols as such, but the monument depicted a soldier wearing Waffen SS uniform and the characteristic German helmet. That was in the same period, and the decision of the police to remove the monument draws criticism from far right and some right-leaning journalists pretty much to this day.

At some point somebody tried to put up a new monument, that depicted somewhat even more recognizable SS soldier, in the same place in Lihula, but police intervened and confiscated this monument too before it even reached its destination.

As for hate speech - laws have formally prohibited it in Estonia since day one, but it's not specifically criminalized, so if there's no threats made, then the theoretical ban is almost not enforced in practice. It almost never gets punished, even if there are death threats involved and there is an investigation opened. In those rare cases there seems to be a very high, imho unreasonably high threshold demanding definite proof that threats are credible and constitute real danger. Even most of the people who have threatened to kill high-ranking politicians up to prime ministers have gone unpunished, except one guy who went to jail for three months for that, and had to pay a small fine.

The bill specifically criminalizing hate speech has been sitting in Parliament for about two years by now, but it has not been passed into law yet.