Punishing misinformation in practice? Uff… The NGO pointed to a harsh reality! After all, this paragraph is almost not used – Topky.sk

The non-government pointed out that since 2010, an average of 25 sentences have been imposed for spreading the alarm message, five of them unconditionally on average. “Interestingly, out of 30 last year, 13 were from Košice. The media reports show that these were mainly false reports of explosives in public places, including the courts themselves. These cases also cause significant economic damage, in 2016, for example, the Košice court personified the perpetrator for the evacuation of court buildings 14 thousand euros, “ stated.

“The same trend is confirmed by the view of 18 convictions and criminal orders for the whole country, which was offered to us in this section by the search engine on the Open Courts portal in 2020 and 2021. All but one concerned the reporting of a bomb or the threat of a gas explosion.” pointed out. According to them, the only exception was an employee of a small construction company from Banská Bystrica, who at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 came up with a story about his infection and mandatory quarantine for employees and paralyzed the entire operation for two days.

Source: Facebook / Transparency International Slovakia

“Even from these data, it is clear that the paragraph on the dissemination of the alarm message is used relatively narrowly today,” they stated. According to them, that’s probably why “The Ministry of Justice prefers to extend this crime to include the new factual nature of the dissemination of false information.”

“Given the serious implications of false reports, this consideration can be understood and we welcome the discussion on this topic. At the same time, however, criminal law should always be a means of last resort.” they would. In addition, the proposed vague wording, which may create scope for abuse, seems problematic to them.

Source: Getty Images

Pin amendment to the Criminal Code

The amendment to the Criminal Code is currently in interdepartmental comment proceedings. In addition to disseminating alerts, it also deals with the treatment of drug offenses, responds to the current increase in attacks on medical staff, teachers, security forces and journalists, and also addresses the issue of rape.

As explained by the Ministry, in connection with the mentioned regulation of criminal offenses related to the spread of disinformation and the introduction of a new criminal offense “Dissemination of false information”, the “also the increasing number of production and dissemination of false information, which is being produced and disseminated during this period, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and which have the potential to endanger human lives and health. We propose to create a new criminal offense The offense will be the production or dissemination of knowingly false information which is liable to cause serious concern to at least part of the population of a place, to endanger the lives or health of persons or to influence the population in deciding serious matters of societal importance. “