Chaos erupted this week surrounding the introduction of a new draconian speech law in Scotland as Police received nearly 4,000 complaints within the first two days of it being in place, with far-left First Minister Humza Yousaf reportedly receiving more complaints than Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling over her transgenderism critiques.
Former general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, Calum Steele revealed on Wednesday that Police Scotland received a hate speech report on an average of every two minutes since the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act came into force on Monday, LBC reports.
This, he said, equated to around 3,800 complaints in the first two days of the controversial new law, which criminalises the vaguely worded “stirring up hatred” against protected groups on the basis of age, disability, race, sexual orientation, and transgender identity with a penalty of up to seven years in prison.
Steele claimed that “more than half” of the complaints have yet to be processed, as Police Scotland said that every report would be reviewed, despite the force being stretched thin with actual crimes, such as the drug epidemic in the country, which has the highest drug-related death rate in all of Europe.
According to a police source speaking to The Scottish Sun newspaper, Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, the architect of the new speech restrictions, received more complaints than J.K Rowling over his 2020 speech in the locally devolved Scottish parliament decrying that there were too many white people in positions of authority in the overwhelmingly white nation.
“A lot of those complaints were about Humza Yousaf, on the same complaint about his parliamentary rant,” the source said, adding: “J.K. Rowling has had some, but not as many as Humza Yousaf.”
Rowling, one of Scotland’s most prominent residents, openly challenged the Police on Monday to arrest her for declaring that several profile transgender individuals were men, after the leftist Scottish National Party (SNP) government had said that “misgendering” people would be a violation of the law.
However, Police Scotland, perhaps fearing the international circus that would ensue if they tried to lock up the Harry Potter author over comments made on social media, announced on Tuesday that they would not be seeking criminal charges against Rowling.
This is potentially precedent-setting, as police would face accusations of two-tiered justice if they attempted to arrest average citizens for similar comments to Rowling’s. Meanwhile, Rowling said that if any woman is charged for calling a “man a man”, she will post the same exact message on social media, so the police would be forced to to charge her as well.
In a further embarrassment for the leftist government in Edinburg, SNP minister Siobhian Brown revealed on Wednesday that police were receiving numerous “fake and vexatious complaints” to stymie the system, including at least one fake complaint made in her name.
Brown, the minister who said “misgendering” would be illegal under the Act, told BBC Scotland: “I was surprised myself on Monday to receive a call from Police Scotland about my complaint – this was a fake complaint someone had done anonymously in my name, and gave my office number.”
Police Scotland has also faced demands to reveal whether they recorded a non-crime hate incident against First Minister Yousaf over what many viewed as an anti-white rant in 2020.
Tory Member of Scottish Parliament Murdo Fraser, who has threatened legal action against the police force after it was revealed that he had a “hate incident” recorded against him for comparing so-called non-binary people to those who identify as cats, called on Police Scotland to reveal if they have also made a report against Yousaf.
“The first minister was subjected to complaints yesterday in relation to a speech he made in parliament back in 2020, which some people claim was racist,” Fraser said per the Scottish Daily Express.
“And the police have investigated this, they’ve said quite rightly in my view, there was no criminality here. But in line with their policy, the police will have to record each and every one of these complaints as a non-crime hate incident, both against JK Rowling and the first minister Humza Yousaf.”
“There’s actually a fairly significant point, because in relation to the first minister, either the police are going to treat an opposition politician in Scotland like myself differently from the way they treat the SNP first minister which would be an absolute outrage, or the police in Scotland agree to say that Scotland’s first minister is responsible for a hate incident.”
Hundreds of thousands of citizens across the UK have had their details logged into police databases for making supposedly offensive statements in instances of so-called non-crime hate incidents, which although, as the name would imply, do not rise to the level of actual crimes, can still be visible on police background checks and therefore have a stifling effect on speech.
Although British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has criticised the new law in Scotland as impeding free speech, his government still criminalises speech and police in England are reportedly continuing to record non-crime hate incidents, despite calls from the government — but not legislation — to end the practice.
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