A new hate crime law will come into force in Scotland that will make anyone who offends transgender people a criminal no matter where they are on Earth



On April 1, 2024,

the Hate Crime and Public Order Act came into force in Scotland. This law means that anything that can be read in Scotland, including online posts, can be considered 'hateful', and there are concerns about its impact on freedom of speech.

Scotland's Hate Speech Act and Abuse of Process - Craig Murray
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/03/scotlands-hate-speech-act-and-abuse-of-process/

Scotland's new hate crime law: what does it cover and why is it controversial? | Scotland | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/31/scotlands-new-hate-act-what-does-it-cover-and-why-is-it-controversial

The new hate crimes law, which came into force in Scotland on 1 April 2024, strengthens existing laws against hate crimes and aims to prevent hatred against six characteristics: age, disability, race, skin colour, nationality, ethnicity or country of origin, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and intersex/dyssexuality . Violation of these laws carries a maximum prison sentence of seven years.

However, Scottish journalist and human rights activist Craig Murray has strongly criticised the law, saying it is full of vagueness and could be used in an arbitrary manner.



Murray sees two main problems with the law: first, it broadens the scope of people who could be prosecuted as criminals, because the new law means that any online speech that can be read in Scotland will be deemed to have been published in Scotland.

Why this is a problem is explained by Murray: 'If someone in Tahiti posts a post on Twitter that offends someone in Scotland because it violates one of the six protected characteristics, then that person has committed an offence in Scotland, even though they've never left their home in Tahiti or visited Scotland.'

With so much content generated on the internet every day and much of it available to anyone, including people living in Scotland, we expect a huge number of hate crimes to occur in Scotland after April 1st.

In fact, Police Scotland announced that about 8,000 hate crimes were reported in just the week after the new law came into effect. According to

an analysis by the British newspaper The Telegraph, if reports continue at this rate, it will exceed the total of all crimes reported to Police Scotland in a year, which is 416,000, and the majority of crimes in Scotland will be hate crimes.

It may seem like an exaggeration to claim that someone could be criminally prosecuted under Scottish law when they have never been to Scotland, but lawyer Roddy Dunlop supports Murray's interpretation of the law, saying: 'If it's published online and read in Scotland, then in law it's published in Scotland.'



Murray's second concern is the law's narrow scope of protection: the new law explicitly regulates 'insults' in addition to threats and assaults, making the requirements for what constitutes a crime quite loose.

Furthermore, Scottish police authorities have instructed officers that 'the standard for determining whether a hate crime has occurred is whether the reporter felt uncomfortable or threatened, and the police should not make an objective judgement,' meaning that anything that the recipient feels is an insult will be treated as a crime.

In addition, three of the six protected characteristics are reserved for sexual minorities, but not for women or men, meaning misogyny or discrimination against women is not covered. 'The strange thing is that under the new law it's still perfectly legal to insult women and men,' Murray said.



The Scottish government plans to bring in separate laws to protect women by May 2026. SNP MP Joanna Cherry said she had 'no doubt that the new laws will be weaponised by trans rights activists to silence, or even worse, criminalise, women who believe differently from them'.

One person who has been particularly critical of this hate crimes law is J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on April 1, 2024, the day the new law came into effect, Rowling named 10 prominent trans women, including Andrew Miller, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for abducting an 11-year-old girl and assaulting her for 27 hours while cross-dressing and calling himself Amy. 'It's an April Fool's joke. Obviously, the people referred to in these tweets are men, not women. I'm currently outside of Scotland, but if what I've written here constitutes a crime under the new law, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment ,' she said in protest of the new law.

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