The legislation creates a brand new crime of “stirring up hatred” regarding protected traits.
“Individuals shouldn’t be criminalised for stating easy info on biology. We consider in free speech on this nation, and Conservatives will at all times shield it,” Sunak stated in a press release.
In a collection of social media posts on Monday, Rowling – a vocal defender of ladies’s solely areas when being balanced with the rights of transexuals – referenced a number of transgender ladies as males, together with convicted prisoners, trans activists and different public figures. The award-winning Scottish writer, who lives in Edinburgh, then invited police to arrest her in the event that they believed she had dedicated an offence beneath the brand new legislation.
“I am at the moment in a foreign country, but when what I’ve written right here qualifies as an offence beneath the phrases of the brand new act, I look ahead to being arrested after I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment,” writes Rowling on X, previously Twitter.
Rowling, 58, stated the members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) who voted for the brand new hate crime legal guidelines had “positioned larger worth on the emotions of males performing their thought of femaleness, nonetheless misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of precise ladies and ladies”.
Humza Yousaf, the Pakistani-origin First Minister of Scotland who was justice minister within the Scottish Nationwide Social gathering (SNP) led authorities when the invoice was handed within the Scottish Parliament Holyrood in 2021, was focused with Islamophobic graffiti close to his dwelling in Dundee within the wake of the brand new legislation being enforced. Nonetheless, he insisted it was a reminder of why such a legislation is required to make sure a “zero-tolerance strategy to hatred”.
Police Scotland is investigating the graffiti and stated “inquiries are ongoing”.
In the meantime, a whole bunch gathered exterior the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh to protest in opposition to the brand new hate crime legislation for its restrictions on freedom of speech. They waved placards studying: “Fact is just not hate speech” and “Shield free speech”.
The brand new legal guidelines had been developed following an Impartial Evaluate of Hate Crime Laws, which concluded that new particular offences regarding stirring up hatred had been wanted.
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