The Government’s deputy delegate in A Coruña, María Rivas, highlighted the Government’s commitment to the fight against racism and xenophobia. He did so this Thursday at the inauguration of the III Symracxen Conference, organized this year by the NGO Accem under the title ‘The multiple faces of discrimination’, at the Casares Quiroga House Museum in A Coruña.
The subdelegate highlighted the measures activated through the Strategic Framework of Citizenship and Inclusion against Racism and Xenophobia, which puts at the forefront prevention and awareness through educational programs to promote diversity and inclusion at an early age.
María Rivas stressed that the implementation of this strategy entails an increase in the human and budgetary resources of the Council for the Elimination of Racial or Ethnic Discrimination (CIDRE), as well as the creation of a specific telephone number for attention to victims, on 021.
Likewise, he pointed out that the strategic framework also addresses the strengthening of victim support services through legal and psychological support and the establishment of new mechanisms for the detection and punishment of hate crimes, especially in the digital environment.
It also involves the implementation of a system that allows the daily monitoring and analysis of hate speech on social networks, an aspect in which work is being done with the main platforms to improve moderation policies and ensure the rapid elimination of hate content.
María Rivas stressed that the Government’s commitment “is to continue working on the prevention of hate speech, and giving answers to people, because the priority of this Government is always people,” she said.
These days are also a meeting place with the entities that work daily in the first line of defense of human rights, with the most vulnerable people and those who live in more precarious situations, who are the most affected by racism and xenophobia.
Referring to complaints filed in 2023, the subdelegate reported that hate crimes increased by 21% compared to the previous year. Those motivated by racism and xenophobia were the most numerous, with 856 incidents, representing 41.8% of the total number of complaints. In addition, there were 522 incidents related to sexual orientation and gender identity, and 352 motivated by ideology.
The subdelegate indicated that the importance of the data should not be reduced, but clarified that the increase in the number of complaints also responds to the advances in awareness, in zero tolerance. “Society will no longer tolerate racist, sexist, xenophobic or discriminatory behaviour.”
He warned that “hate speech, negationism, and intolerance are part of a counter-democratic movement that unfortunately gains ground, most obviously on social media, so we can neither neglect nor stop claiming equality and social justice.”
The deputy delegate was accompanied at the inauguration by Nereida Canosa, councilor for Social Welfare, Participation and Equality of the Council of A Coruña, and Daniel Bóveda, territorial manager of Accem in Galicia.