The police have revealed they are being frequently frustrated by Facebook in their requests for information about suspected Maltese account holders that they wish to investigate for criminal offences.

Asked why no one had been arrested after a complaint was made last November about threats and incitement to racial hatred on a social network, a police spokesman said: “It is very difficult to get Facebook to agree to hand over information.”

The legal spokesman explained that the police need Facebook to provide and confirm personal details about its users who are subject to criminal complaints.

“We cannot be sure that the person who types certain things is not pretending to be someone else on Facebook,” he said.

The spokesman added that the Facebook website was hosted in the US, where the laws on freedom of speech were different to Malta’s.

“If we request information about something that is not a crime in America we are automatically refused,” the police said. Published earlier this month, the Malta Human Rights Report 2013 noted an increase in the level of hate speech last year, particularly over the internet.

In particular, the report drew attention to November’s police complaint lodged by two women, who work closely with migrants, about “incendiary anti-immigration comments” on Facebook.

It is imperative to combat racism

The comments on an anti-immigration page also “threatened violence against Maltese citizens deemed as ‘traitors’ and their families, as well as migrants,” the report by the People for Change Foundation noted.

Maria Pisani, one of the women who lodged the complaint against two different Facebook account holders, said the investigating officer had never replied to her requests for information.

“Failure to take decisive steps to address hate speech encourages a culture of impunity – and thus an increase in such abuse,” Ms Pisani said.

Threats have continued to appear on the notorious anti-immigrant Facebook page which was the subject of the police complaint. Several users with Maltese surnames posted comments in the wake of a disturbance at a detention centre calling for migrants to be killed.

Sociologist Michael Briguglio said that although an increase in inflammatory comments did not automatically result in people committing violence, this could act as a trigger which normalises, enhances and legitimises such behaviour.

Mr Briguglio feels that hate speech has increased in the past year.

“Populist political discourse and populist messages within certain elements of the mass media and social media have been quite influential in this regard,” he said.

Mr Briguglio also believes that support for the far right is on the rise and the upcoming European elections could provide evidence of this, not only in terms of votes for far right candidates but also in terms of the rhetoric of the main political parties.

Political discourse which is critical of the ‘Fortress Europe’ approach to migration, and which attempts to articulate “integration” with “social justice”, is imperative to combat racism, Mr Briguglio said.

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