A rise in racially motivated attacks is spreading fear in communities in Northern Ireland, Geraldine Hanna has said.
The Victims of Crime Commissioner designate said the PSNI must be funded appropriately to deal with hate crime, and called for a robust response from social media companies to the spreading of hate messages online.
A spate of racially motivated attacks in south Belfast earlier this year saw some ethnic minority-owned businesses attacked.
Ms Hanna said: “With the issue of racial hate crime it has significantly increased in Northern Ireland, and there is a concern from victims and victims’ groups about the potential possible inability of our system to appropriately respond to it.
“There is a lot of online racial hatred that we are seeing being stirred up and there is a real responsibility there for both the police, but also the big tech companies, to be able to respond appropriately to it.
“The impact of these types of crimes is far reaching, not just to the victims themselves but also to the community which they are a part of.
“The wider community often feel fear as a part of that.
“I do think that the work that we need to progress around the hate crime legislation is important, but we also need to ensure that within the existing legislation, those cases where there is racial intimidation or harassment or other types of racially motivated crime, they are taken seriously, they are investigated robustly, and the full force of the criminal justice system is behind prosecutions.”
Ms Hanna said online activity included a range of offending including stalking and harassment.
She said: “Technology is really racing ahead and our criminal justice system is quite slow in terms of its ability to keep up.
“That is why it is so important for our criminal justice agencies, particularly the police, to be appropriately funded so they have the resources available to properly investigate and test the evidence, and there is also the need to ensure that our criminal justice system can deal with it as well.
“We have had recently the Online Safety Bill (at Westminster). That does increase the responsibility and accountability of the big tech companies. How willing they will be in terms of complying with that remains to be seen.
“At this stage, for victims it can often feel like a bit of a lost space, where people are finding their way, it is not a well-trodden path in many regards regarding the law and it is often worldwide.
“Often you have the complexity of the person perpetrating the harm does not live within the jurisdiction of the victim and that has challenges that we all need to grapple with.”
