The moron who shouted abuse at Muslim worshippers outside
the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch on Wednesday now faces a possible prison
sentence, and so he should.
Why the police officers stationed outside the mosque didn’t
arrest this odious exhibitionist hoodlum immediately is a question only they
can answer, but at least someone higher up later thought better of it.
Anyway, Daniel Nicholas Tuapawa has now pleaded guilty to a
charge of behaving in an insulting manner likely to cause violence and has been
remanded on bail for a pre-sentencing report. He says he has no recollection of
the incident.
There’s scope for endless argument about the definition of
hate speech, but even a free-speech advocate like me has no trouble deciding
that someone who allegedly kicked photos of murdered Muslim worshippers while
shouting “Fucking Muslims, they all need to get the fuck out of New Zealand”
and “All Muslims are terrorists” – and this outside the mosque where more than
40 people were killed – has crossed the line.
The police who let him get away with it were just plain wrong to decide
that he was simply exercising his right to free speech. They should have
detained him straight away for a breach of the peace and left it to a court to
decide.
But here’s the thing: the charge belatedly brought today
shows that the police were able to deal with the offence using existing laws. The
lesson is that notwithstanding all the squawking from the opportunistic neo-Marxist
Left who insist we need special hate speech laws, there’s ample scope already
for deterring people who behave in a threatening way toward minorities.
Karl du Fresne, a freelance journalist, is the
former editor of the Dominion-Post. He blogs at karldufresne.blogspot.co.nz.
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