Law against Hatred

Its detractors say that it is designed to oppress political dissent by criminalizing it, establishing restrictions on personal freedom and promoting both censorship and self-censorship.This article also states that the parties must have among their disciplinary rules a guideline on preventative measures against such hatred, and the penalty of expulsion of persons who contravene the law.Luis Armando Betancourt, coordinator of Foro Penal for Carabobo, denounced that the complaint was based on statements by police officials who indicated that they had expressed messages of harm against the president and described the judicial process as irregular because the detention was arbitrary, since "they were committing no actual crime against him [Maduro]".[8] On 30 January 2018, the director and editor of the newspaper Región Oriente in Cumaná were summoned by the Dirección General de Contrainteligencia Militar (DGCIM) to testify following a complaint made against the 11 January publication of an article in the newspaper, in which the Communist Party of Venezuela warned the Maduro government that they were giving people reason for a social outbreak, such as the Caracazo, through inflation, shortages, lack of access to cash and the deterioration of the transport service.[15] The same year, after a campaign in media outlets and social media by progovernment movements, the pro-government Supreme Tribunal of Justice of Venezuela, through a Caracas court, ordered the ban of the screening of the documentary Chavismo: The Plague of the 21st Century at the Simón Bolívar University (USB) specifically, as well as at public universities and other public spaces in general, in response to the request of a prosecutor investigating it as an alleged hate crime or as inciting hate crimes, established in the Law against Hatred.[17] On August 19, 2020, the pro-government deputy Esteban Arvelo filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor's Office in the city of Caracas against the lawyer and human rights defender José Amalio Graterol, the social communicator Daniel Lara Farías, and the youth writer Juan Viale Rigo.Tarek William Saab, the Attorney General imposed by the 2017 Constituent National Assembly, set up the Special 4th Control Court "with competence in cases related to terrorism".The deputies who participated in the debate expressed that the law establishes restrictions on personal freedom, promotes self-censorship and censorship by the organs of the State, "suppressing the few spaces that citizens have to discuss matters of collective interest and inhibiting the possibility of making complaints of any nature".