The Justice Ministry has proposed an amendment to the Penal Code that imposes stricter punishments for extremists, the ministry announced in a press release made available to the TASR newswire.
The amendment is in response to recent events in whivh Hungarian and other football fans created unrest at a football match in Dunajská Streda (Nitra region) on November 1. A second incident involved 41 members of the Hungarian Guard wearing Nazi-era uniforms who came to Kráľovský Chlmec (Košice region) on the 70th anniversary of the 1st Vienna arbitration (which helped Hungary regain Slovak territory ceded at the end of WWI).
"We won't just sit and watch extremists do their thing. That's why we propose stricter punishments and introduce new and more precise definitions of, for example, what an extremist group is," said Justice Minister Štefan Harabin, adding that Holocaust and genocide deniers will be punished more strictly as well.
New crimes are defined in the amendment such as the production, distribution and harbouring of extremist materials, defaming and hectoring people on the basis of their nationality, race, lineage, ethnicity or religious beliefs. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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