"Progress made, but hate speech still present"

The only news I've heard about Serbia in the international media over the past week is about the recent incident of racial abuse. Not good.

Speech is speech and unless it directly and specifically calls for injury, damage or harm to others - it must be free. Hate is human emotion. Every human must be allowed to express all of his emotions, politically correct or not. So "hate speech" as right now defined in Serbia and EU is violation of fundamental human right.
What to do (in Serbia and elsewhere) with hateful speech? - Respond with strong, winning positive speech! That is the whole point of free speech right.
Worst of all, one country in the world that has proper format of right to free speech protected in the heart of it's constitution is one of countries who sent diplomatic complaints to Serbia about this alleged "hate speech". That same speech would be legal and protected in the USA. Yet, instead of supporting their own set of values, they complain and demand that we reduce our rights.

Hate speech and free speech are not the same thing. Hate speech has an emotional content that intrinsically represents alienation and antagonism, and as such impinges on the freedom of those that are hated, whereas free speech is the expression of an argued and/or believed point of view which, while not necessarily conveniently acceptable to others, is recognisably a statement of a what the speaker believes to be a fact.

I don't usually have much difficulty in recognising the difference.

In Serbia, minority groups have equal rights and are protected. Just like minorities in Kosovo.

Of course, all in theory and written in the constitutions only, the real life is totally different.

The only news I've heard about Serbia in the international media over the past week is about the recent incident of racial abuse. Not good.

Speech is speech and unless it directly and specifically calls for injury, damage or harm to others - it must be free. Hate is human emotion. Every human must be allowed to express all of his emotions, politically correct or not. So "hate speech" as right now defined in Serbia and EU is violation of fundamental human right.
What to do (in Serbia and elsewhere) with hateful speech? - Respond with strong, winning positive speech! That is the whole point of free speech right.
Worst of all, one country in the world that has proper format of right to free speech protected in the heart of it's constitution is one of countries who sent diplomatic complaints to Serbia about this alleged "hate speech". That same speech would be legal and protected in the USA. Yet, instead of supporting their own set of values, they complain and demand that we reduce our rights.

Hate speech and free speech are not the same thing. Hate speech has an emotional content that intrinsically represents alienation and antagonism, and as such impinges on the freedom of those that are hated, whereas free speech is the expression of an argued and/or believed point of view which, while not necessarily conveniently acceptable to others, is recognisably a statement of a what the speaker believes to be a fact.

I don't usually have much difficulty in recognising the difference.

In Serbia, minority groups have equal rights and are protected. Just like minorities in Kosovo.

Of course, all in theory and written in the constitutions only, the real life is totally different.