Watch Nidhi Razdan — why has Scotland become so violent? - video Dailymotion

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Scotland’s new hate crime law is making headlines around the world with a key question at the heart of the debate -- will this law have a chilling impact on free speech? Scotland already has laws that deal with hate crime but the new ‘Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act’ creates an offence of “threatening or abusive behaviour which is intended to stir up hatred” on the grounds of age, disability, religion, sexual orientation etc.  Read the full story here: https://gulfnews.com/opinion/why-new-scotland-hate-crime-law-has-sparked-controversy-1.102169928  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  #UAEnews #scotland #nidhirazdan

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00:00Scotland has just implemented a new hate crime law, where controversy has erupted over this

00:09question, will it actually curb hate crimes, or will it end up curbing free speech instead?

00:15The reason this is being asked is because Great Britain already has laws that deal with

00:19hate crimes.

00:20But what Scotland's new legislation does is bring newer groups into its ambit.

00:25For example, transgenders, who are at the heart of the latest controversy.

00:30Author JK Rowling is a well-known critic of trans activism and has been lashing out

00:35on social media over the new law, daring the police to arrest her.

00:39Those who support the legislation say that groups like transgenders will have protection

00:44for the very first time under the law, they've been at the receiving end of abusive behaviour

00:49for years now.

00:50Those that oppose the legislation, however, say that what constitutes abusive behaviour

00:55has been very vaguely defined in the law, it can be misused, it will lead to people

00:59self-censoring, not really speaking their mind on social media or elsewhere because

01:05they fear that they will be picked up by the police or probed by the police etc and therefore

01:11harassed.

01:12What the police are also saying in Scotland is that they're already quite stretched and

01:16perhaps not really trained enough to deal with hate crime complaints of this proportion.

01:22They've already received more than 7,000 complaints in the first week of the implementation

01:27of this law and they've been very careful not to go around, you know, making everything

01:32into a criminal complaint, but we have to see how it plays out as it unfolds from here.

01:38What the law has actually done is that it's taken a divisive issue like gender rights

01:43and further amplified the polarisation and the divisions that exist on this in a much

01:49much bigger way, which unfortunately doesn't help.

01:53But on the issue of free speech, there are some valid concerns and we have to see how

01:58these are addressed as we go along.

Watch Nidhi Razdan — why has Scotland become so violent?

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