LONDON: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Tuesday got here out in assist of ‘Harry Potter’ creator JK Rowling over her stance towards a brand new hate crime regulation enforced by the devolved authorities of Scotland, which she says restricts free speech. The British Indian chief made a press release concerning the new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, which got here in power on Monday and led Rowling to problem a pointy rebuke on social media warning towards the “dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces”.The regulation creates a brand new crime of “stirring up hatred” referring to protected traits. “People should not be criminalised for stating simple facts on biology. We believe in free speech in this country, and Conservatives will always protect it,” Sunak stated in a press release. In a sequence of social media posts on Monday, Rowling – a vocal defender of ladies’s solely areas when being balanced with the rights of transexuals – referenced a number of transgender girls as males, together with convicted prisoners, trans activists and different public figures. The award-winning Scottish creator, who lives in Edinburgh, then invited police to arrest her in the event that they believed she had dedicated an offence underneath the brand new regulation. “I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment,” writes Rowling on X, previously Twitter. Rowling, 58, stated the members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) who voted for the brand new hate crime legal guidelines had “placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls”. Humza Yousaf, the Pakistani-origin First Minister of Scotland who was justice minister within the Scottish Nationwide Celebration (SNP) led authorities when the invoice was handed within the Scottish Parliament Holyrood in 2021, was focused with Islamophobic graffiti close to his dwelling in Dundee within the wake of the brand new regulation being enforced. Nevertheless, he insisted it was a reminder of why such a regulation is required to make sure a “zero-tolerance approach to hatred”. Police Scotland is investigating the graffiti and stated “inquiries are ongoing”. In the meantime, a whole bunch gathered exterior the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh to protest towards the brand new hate crime regulation for its restrictions on freedom of speech. They waved placards studying: “Truth is not hate speech” and “Protect free speech”. The brand new legal guidelines had been developed following an Unbiased Evaluate of Hate Crime Laws, which concluded that new particular offences referring to stirring up hatred had been wanted.
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