National Report on Hate Crime Monitoring Cyprus With financial support from the Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme of the European Union 3 Introduction This report is prepared and submitted in the and CSOs. context of TOGETHER! Empowering civil so- • Implement ciety and law enforcement agencies to make a) training sessions and hate crime visible, which is a transnational b) follow-up sessions with members of programme co-funded by the Justice Depart- LEAs and CSOs in the partner countries. ment of the European Commission. The pro- • Develop ject is of two years duration, from the 1st of a) a protocol aimed at LEAs, and December 2014 until the 31st of November b) a data-collection tool aimed at 2016, and is implemented by NGOs from the NGOs on hate crime reporting, based on Republic of Cyprus (RoC), Italy, the Czech Re- European best practices. public and Spain. KISA – Action for Equality, • Promote the setting up of mechanisms of Support, Antiracism, in cooperation with the information-exchange between CSOs and Office of the Cypriot Ombudsperson as an af- LEAs in the partner countries. filiated partner, implements the project in the • Elaborate four national reports and RoC The project is coordinated by SOS Racism a comparative report on hate crime, based Gipuzkoa, while other partners are: SOS Rac- on data collected by CSOs using the da- isme Catalunya (Spain), Organization for Aid ta-collection tool. to Refugees - OPU (Czech Republic), and Lu- • Organise an international conference on naria, CGIL - Department of Immigration and the under reporting of hate crime. Social Policy, University of Roma Tre (Italy). The context in which the programme was cre- The project aims to improve the capacities of ated is the persistent presence of indications Law Enforcement Agencies -LEAs and Civil that the situation of hate crime in Europe is Society Organisations – CSOs (NGOs as well not improving, despite the efforts of EU Mem- as community-based organisations) in making ber States to combat the phenomenon, which hate crime visible among European society, is based on racism and xenophobia. Under-re- which is a vital step to tackle hate crime and porting of hate crime based on racism and address related fundamental rights violations. xenophobia continues to be a significant prob- lem throughout the EU. The specific objectives of the project are: • To strengthen the capacity of LEAs and A clear added value of the project at EU level CSOs to identify and report hate crime is the standardisation of knowledge on hate and to interact with victims; crime for officers and agents of LEAs as well • To improve data collection on hate crime as for CSOs in different countries through by creating and implementing standard training courses, as well as the standardiza- methodologies and tools for data collec- tion of methodologies for reporting cases of tion aimed at LEAs and CSOs; hate crime among Member States. • To strengthen networking and collabo- ration between LEAs and CSOs –on a Indeed, the availability of comparable in- national and international level, in infor- formation and data on hate crime will help mation exchange and follow up on hate the institutions of the Member States to take crime. decisions and implement the most appropri- ate measures in the fight against hate crime. These goals have been designed to be met Likewise, it will facilitate comparison of the through the following: results of these decisions and actions at Eu- • Elaborating a comprehensive training ropean level, as well as analysis and exchange programme on hate crime (based on Eu- of good practices between actors from different ropean best practices), aimed at LEAs European countries. 4 Moreover, the project deliverables (handbook, videos, data collection tools, reports, etc.) are available on the project website, making possible for concerned people, organizations, institu- tions and other agencies in Member Countries to utilise them to raise awareness on hate crime among the European society. More information about the project and its deliverables are available on the project website at www.togetherproject.eu. 1) Making hate crime visible in the Republic of Cyprus - the state of the art What is hate crime? publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed This project adopts the definition of hate crime against a group of persons or a member of provided by the Organisation for Security and such a group defined by sexual orientation or Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), according to gender identity.1 The commission of such act which, a hate crime is any crime (criminal of- referred to above is criminalised if done by fence) with a bias motivation, which means public dissemination or distribution of tracts, that the perpetrator(s) intentionally chose the pictures or other material or in any other target(s) of the crime because of a (real or al- manner. Before this amendment, hate speech leged) protected characteristic of the victim(s). was only criminalised in regards to racism Such protected characteristics are: ethnic or- and xenophobia. Currently, hate speech is pro- igin, migratory background, colour, religion, hibited when it targets a person or a group of language, gender identity, sexual orientation, persons on the basis (or the assumption) of age, disability, health status (including mental their ethnic origin, race, colour, religion, gen- health). der identity and sexual orientation. Legislation on hate crime Data collection The RoC has no legislation on hate crime as The police such. Neither the penal code nor any other The institution officially tasked with collecting law specifically addresses or defines hate crime data on hate crime in Cyprus is the Office for as a crime per se. The Combating of Certain Combating Discrimination (OCD), which is Forms and Expressions of Racism and Xeno- under the Criminal Investigation Office (CIO) phobia by means of Criminal Law, Law of 2011 of the Cyprus Police. The OCD has been op- (Law 134(I)/2011) is the only major legislation erating since 2005 and has the responsibility relevant to hate crime and it was introduced of monitoring the investigation of complaints for reasons of transposing Council Framework and reports submitted to the police on inci- Decision 2008/913/JHA of 28 November 2008, dents of discrimination. The OCD keeps a reg- on combating certain forms and expressions istry of incidents of hate crime and it collabo- of racism and xenophobia by means of crim- rates with police investigators for handling of inal law, which only criminalises the specific incidents of discrimination with the purpose conduct provided in the Council Framework of ensuring the effective implementation of Decision. In addition, Law 134(I)/2011estab- the relevant legislation. It also cooperates with lishes that racist and/ or xenophobic motive other stakeholders (both governmental institu- must be taken into account as an aggravating tions and NGOs). factor on the imposition of the penalty, but it does not cover any other protected character- istics (such as homophobia, misogyny, trans- 1 TOGETHER! Empowering civil society and Law Enforcement Agencies to make hate crimes visible. Let’s End phobia, ableism, ageism) as an aggravating Hate Crime – Country Report: Cyprus. factor. A 2015 amendment of the Penal Code http://kisa.org.cy/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Hate_ (Law 87(I)/2015) criminalises the intentional Crime_Together_report_Cy.pdf 5 Victims of hate crime can report a complaint of police officers to recognise, register and in- of what they experienced at the local police vestigate them as such. Police officers’ lack of station in the area the incident(s) happened. awareness and allowing personal prejudices to When such a complaint is submitted, the po- interfere with their professional conduct can lice are required to investigate it and prepare a and do hinder reporting and investigation of report, which they submit to the District Police hate crime incidents. Director and then to the OCD and also, in case they think there is enough evidence to The police Order 3/38 issued by the Chief of prosecute the case, to the Attorney General. Police states that an incident must be identi- The Attorney General decides and instructs fied and recorded as a racially motivated of- whether to prosecute it or not. The evidence fence in case it is reported or perceived as such provided as well as matters of public interest by the victim, or a person/ an NGO acting on must be taken into consideration when mak- behalf of the victim, or a witness, or a member ing such a decision. NGOs and/or other repre- of the police, or the Ombudsperson. sentatives of the victim(s), as well as witness- es, can also report hate crimes. Yet, at least in The registry the OCD keeps on hate crime practice, the victim(s) will eventually have to incidents records incidents the police have give a statement to the police station, in order identified as “cases of racial nature and/ or for the complaint to be investigated. with racial motive” since 2005 and it gives in- formation, both on an annual basis and total Upon receipt of a complaint, the competent po- numbers, on the following data: lice station must fill out a standardised form, • Numbers of: incidents recorded; cases which includes potential bias indicators used that have been criminally investigated; for recording purposes. Police officers have, ac- cases filed as “undetected, non-existent, cording to police orders as well as their train- otherwise disposed, non-police nature”; ing, to make all efforts to reveal any bias mo- cases reviewed; cases filed as “in abey- tivation of a crime. Yet, it evidently depends ance”; and cases filed in Court, including very much on individual police officers how information on the number of cases pend- much effort they will put on this.