In recent days, the circulation of inappropriate photos of several judges with their home addresses and calls to violence has been causing quite a stir in the public. There was an immediate reaction with lots of criticism from both the judiciary and politics, which is, of course, only right, but many are saddened by the fact that such a strong reaction and immediate action by the competent authorities have not been seen in many cases in the past.
Threats are ever-present, and those who hide behind anonymous profiles on social networks can be particularly hostile. A particularly high number of threats circulated during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the government was led by Janez Janša, the leader of the largest opposition party, the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS), and protective measures proposed by the medical profession were in place. But even though the address of Janša, who was Prime Minister during the term of the previous government, was repeatedly published on the social networks Facebook and X, and there were even calls for violence, no one in the police and prosecutors’ offices was particularly bothered with this. Politics did not uniformly condemn what had happened, nor did they react when threats appeared in the form of photographs, for example, when a photograph of Janša with a shot to the head was repeatedly being published online, nor did they find the weekly threats made by the anti-government protesters of the time disturbing. In any case, Janša condemned any threats of violence in this particular case. “Threats of violence are unacceptable, but for the left-wing transitional quasi-elite, the problem only arises if someone threatens them, and if someone threatens us, it’s all right – or even encouraged,” Janša pointed out in a recent interview on Radio Ognjišče.
All threats must be treated with the same level of condemnation
Since the judiciary apparently tolerates a certain type of threat, but when it comes to threats against judges, it is a different story, we decided to ask the Constitutional Court Judge, Dr Jan Zobec, for his opinion on the matter. “I condemn all threats of violence. They are unacceptable, dangerous and inadmissible in a civilised society, but of course, all threats must be treated with the same set of criteria,“ Judge Zobec said, adding that all threats must be treated with the same degree of intolerance, the same degree of condemnation, regardless of whether they are directed at “our own” people or not.
Once you start to make a differentiation here, a distinction, as Zobec has seen in recent times, for example, the message is clear, he said. It is that some people have human rights, that the security of some people is very important, but the security of others is not as important. “Of course, this is what confuses everyone. I am not bothered by this reaction now, I am bothered by the non-reaction in the case of threats to others who are not ideologically, politically or otherwise allies and sympathisers of those who have all the media channels open or who are the owners of these channels,” he stressed.
Namely, in a recent episode of the show “Odmevi” (Echoes) on the national media outlet RTV Slovenia, Dr Miha Šepec from the Maribor Faculty of Law said that the publication of private addresses, in this case of judges and a prosecutor, was definitely a criminal offence. “It is a misuse of personal data. In this particular case, given all the other things that were published, it is at least a threat and also an obstruction of justice. An obstruction of justice happens when a certain action could affect the work of the judicial authorities. If there were specific proceedings going on and now there were attempts to influence the judges in these proceedings by such threats, this could be a most serious offence,” he added. Judge Zobec disagreed with the law professor’s assessment that the offence of obstruction of the judiciary was involved in this case.
“This is absolutely not true, because in this case, we are talking about three judges who have been retired for quite some time, for several years, and one of them is a former prosecutor who has been a lawyer for quite a few years now. So this cannot be qualified or treated as serious as what this commentator has said, this commentator has assessed,” Zobec pointed out, adding, “This is an example of hate speech, just as all the demonstrations we saw during the pandemic are examples of hate speech.”
Ž. N.
