Racist Twitter user jailed for 56 days

[Karunamon]

This boggles my mind, as a citizen of the USA who is used to having freedom of speech.

1) It's a tweet (of all things)..

2) Which incites nothing, and is an expression of opinion

And the guy gets hauled off to jail for 2 months because of it? This is the kind of behavior I'd expect from China, not an ostensibly first world nation!

*edit

I meant that literally, too. My mind simply ceases processing the circumstances under which a completely harmless tweet, in a place like Great Britain, can be grounds for legal action. I thought (mistakenly) that freedom of speech was recognized a bit more with the US's allies.

[AkThhhpppt]

The right to free speech is a negative right under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Why incitement to racial hatred might be an issue in the UK?

The usual figure given is 1 in 10 people living in the UK is an immigrant. This does NOT count descendants of immigrants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brixton_riots

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Nationalist_Party

[freehunter]

Even in the US, you can be sued civilly for hateful comments and jailed for comments that could be construed as inviting or inciting violence.

I don't know the full story, the tweets are gone and the BBC didn't reproduce them.

[p4lto]

I don't know how the laws are in the UK but damn, jail-time for racists comments? I'm 100% against prejudice but being sent to jail for saying something controversial seems like a bit much.

I don't know much about the government there or what people have rights to, any clarity would be much appreciated.

[rlpb]

"Inciting racial hatred" is illegal here. I think that's quite a bit more specific than "saying something controversial".

I don't see that this is any different from the US First Amendment. It has exceptions too (eg. shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre). "Inciting racial hatred" is an equivalent restriction. You may disagree on this law specifically, but I don't see how this affects anything fundamental like freedom of speech or anything like that.

[Argorak]

How is racism controversial? That would imply that its a heavily debatable topic. The point is that he insulted a severely ill person personally in one of the worst ways possible and doing so through a mass medium doesn't help. I don't see a lot of space for a debate here.

I am a bit surprised that this can be enforced without the person in question actually taking action. (hes still in the hospital in critical condition, so I suspect he didn't)

What I am missing in the article is what he actually said.

All in all, the height of the sentence surprises me as well.

[jdminhbg]

I wouldn't support jail time for racist comments, but has anyone seen evidence that he actually made racist comments? The only tweet I've seen reproduced is "Fuck Muamba, he's dead," which is highly assholish but not so far as I can tell racist. At the same time, news reports all seem to reference "tweets" plural, so I may be missing more.

[streptomycin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA5v2eZ5ZZE

Offensive? Rude? Sure. But it doesn't seem like anything too out of the ordinary. If they had microphones in bars, they'd arrest millions for similar utterances.

[icebraining]

Here: http://chirpstory.com/li/5261

[arnoldwh]

I don't feel any pity for this guy from a personal point of view, and I can only hope he learns a lesson because of this instead of going down a darker path of more hate.

However, I still have real issues and concerns with him being jailed for making a racist comment. This seems an awful lot like a slippery slope that we don't want to go down. Any law that restricts what we can say or think scares me when information continues to become easier to pass along into the "public domain."

[revscat]

Given that the UK recently extradited a UK citizen for breaking an American law, does this mean that racist Americans could be extradited to the UK for posting a tweet which incites racial hatred?

Somehow I doubt it, although the logic is superficially sound.

[ajross]

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

[nextstep]

What exactly did he say? I don't understand why this garnered so much attention. There are a lot of racist tweets on Twitter.

[icebraining]

http://chirpstory.com/li/5261

[AkThhhpppt]

Yes, but they're not directed at a public figure who was critical in hospital at the time. Some people responded by calling him on his racism, he apparently doubled down, and someone made a complaint to the police.

[DanBC]

Fabrice Muamba is a soccer / football player who collapsed on the pitch during a game. He's been big news in the UK.

Liam Stacey posted racist tweets soon after Muamba collapsed.

Here's a Youtube video which claims to be screengrabs of the tweets. (I have no idea if it is or not.)

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA5v2eZ5ZZE)

Huffpo has a screenshot, but it's been blurred to the point of incomprehensibility.

In England most offences are treated more severely if there's a racial motivation.

I post this here because I'm pleased that no-one is saying (as far as I can tell) that Twitter should be responsible for what its users post. No one is calling for Twitter to have more oversight or to control their users. People have been happy for the existing laws to take its course.

[noodly]

It's not surprising, if you think about UK as orwellian state (or wannabe).

"It was not the football world who was praying for [Muamba].... everybody was praying for his life."

What a bullshit - I don't even know who he is and I don't care. I stopped reading here.

[why-el]

Read: everybody who knew him outside the field. And do you have any evidence that the UK is become an Orwellian state? I am really surprised at the cheer amount of irresponsible comments in HN lately.

[jack-r-abbit]

hmmmm... I've said many times before "Good thing its not against the law to be an asshole". Turns out it IS against the law. Sure this guy is the lead candidate for Twat of The Year... but 56 days in jail for being an ignorant douche-bag is a dangerous trend to set. If we locked up every ignorant douche-bag we'd have to build A LOT more jails here in the US.

[EnderMB]

If I remember rightly the reason this guy was jailed was not because he made racist commands AT Muamba, rather than about. I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that there is a huge difference between making racist comments about someone and making racist comments to them.

[mindslight]

Maybe someone familiar with the UK could clarify for us: when exactly during that 56 days does he get the rats on his face?

[philhippus]

Not necessarily rats - just whatever is his worst fear, and it'll start on the 2nd day, over on the 55th. Ignorance is Strength.

[rokhayakebe]

For those wondering what he said: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/27/liam-stacey-racis...

[billpg]

Will the people working at the huffington post's UK offices now be jailed?

[J3L2404]

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

[J3L2404]

The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 (c. 1) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which creates an offence in England and Wales of inciting hatred against a person on the grounds of their religion. The Act was the Labour Government's third attempt to bring in this offence: provisions were originally included as part of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill in 2001, but were dropped after objections from the House of Lords. The measure was again brought forward as part of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill in 2004-5, but was again dropped in order to get the body of that Bill passed before the 2005 general election.

[Glowbox]

Good job generalizing an entire continent.