From death threats online to child abuse to the exploitation of refugee women – the list of topics at the spring meeting of federal and state justice ministers is long. Near Neuschwanstein Castle, it is also about dealing with fare dodgers.
Schwangau (dpa / lby) – The federal and state justice ministers will meet on Wednesday (2 p.m.) in Schwangau in the Allgäu for their two-day spring conference. 43 topics are on the program at the meeting near Neuschwanstein Castle. Among other things, the ministers want to discuss how to deal with hate posts in social networks, the prosecution of human trafficking, child abuse and the fight against anti-Semitism.
When dealing with hate online, there are two suggestions for debate. Hamburg’s Justice Senator Anna Gallina (Greens) is calling for a nationwide online portal to report hate comments. Bavaria’s Minister of Justice Georg Eisenreich wants to allow penalties for the operators of large social networks if they do not promptly delete posts such as death threats and terror announcements despite being aware of them. Fines are not enough, said the CSU politician.
Together with Lower Saxony, Bavaria, as the chair of the conference, also proposes tightening the laws against human trafficking and forced prostitution. Eisenreich said that women who had fled Ukraine in particular could be caught by pimps and human traffickers. In the future, investigators should therefore also be allowed to monitor the communication of suspects in cases of pimping.
According to the will of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, stricter rules should also apply when dealing with abuse. If leaders in churches, schools and associations allow further acts after cases of child abuse through negligent action, they should face penalties.
“For these cases, we propose a prison sentence of up to three years,” said Bavaria’s Minister of Justice Eisenreich. As a negative example, the Bavarian Ministry of Justice named clergymen who were allowed to continue to work in pastoral care in the Catholic Church even after cases of abuse became known.
In the fight against anti-Semitism, Bavaria, together with Berlin, is calling for the appointment of special officers at public prosecutor’s offices in all federal states to be examined. In some federal states such as Bavaria, there are already such bodies, said Eisenreich. “We have had very positive experiences with it.”
Dealing with fare dodgers will also be discussed at the conference. Berlin and Bremen want to submit a motion to “decriminalize driving without a ticket”. The “Freedom Fund” initiative wants to hand over more than 100,000 signatures to the ministers on Thursday. So far, fare dodgers face fines and imprisonment of up to one year. The initiative wants to abolish this rule in the penal code.
The justice ministers want to present their decisions at a press conference on Thursday (1.30 p.m.).
