What is racial and religious vilification?
The Queensland Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 (the Act) promotes fairness by protecting people against a range of unfair treatment. One sort of unfair treatment is called vilification (the others are discrimination and sexual harassment), and the Act includes two types – racial and religious. At its simplest, vilification is a public act of racial or religious hatred, and the law says that such acts may be unlawful. It is also a criminal offence to incite racial and religious hatred of others by threatening physical harm towards a person or their property. Vilification can take many forms, including hate-speech, graffiti, websites and other types of written material. The behaviour often: • happens in a public place and • incites others to hate people or groups because of their race or religion. The aim of the law in Queensland is to ensure that people can live free from this hatred. There is also federal law about this, and you might want to call the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Co
