1. Source of the legal provision

• 422d of the Slovakian Criminal Code [Zákon č. 300/2005 Z. z. Trestný zákon]^[1]

  Available in the original language via: Zákony pre ľudí; <https://www.zakonypreludi.sk/zz/2005-300#p422d>.

2. Legal provision in English

Denial and approval of the Holocaust and the crimes of political regimes and crimes against humanity  

• Anyone who publicly denies, disputes, approves or attempts to justify the Holocaust, the crimes of a regime based on fascist ideology, the crimes of a regime based on communist ideology or the crimes of another similar movement that aims to suppress the fundamental rights and freedoms of persons by violence, threat of violence or threat of other serious harm shall be punished by imprisonment for a term of six months to three years.

 

• As in Subsection 1, anyone shall be punished who publicly denies, approves, disputes, grossly trivializes or attempts to justify genocide, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity or war crimes in a manner that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a group of persons or a member thereof, if the perpetrator or participant of that act has been convicted by a final judgment of an international tribunal established on the basis of public international law; whose jurisdiction has been recognized by the Slovak Republic, or by a final judgment of a court of the Slovak Republic.

3. Legal provision in the original language

Popieranie a schvaľovanie holokaustu a zločinov politických režimov a zločinov proti ľudskosti

• Kto verejne popiera, spochybňuje, schvaľuje alebo sa snaží ospravedlniť holokaust, zločiny režimu založeného na fašistickej ideológii, zločiny režimu založeného na komunistickej ideológii alebo zločiny iného podobného hnutia, ktoré násilím, hrozbou násilia alebo hrozbou inej ťažkej ujmy smeruje k potlačeniu základných práv a slobôd osôb, potrestá sa odňatím slobody na šesť mesiacov až tri roky.

 

• Rovnako ako v odseku 1 sa potrestá, kto verejne popiera, schvaľuje, spochybňuje, hrubo zľahčuje alebo sa snaží ospravedlniť genocídium, zločiny proti mieru, zločiny proti ľudskosti alebo vojnové zločiny spôsobom, ktorý môže podnecovať násilie alebo nenávisť voči skupine osôb alebo jej členovi, ak bol páchateľ alebo účastník tohto činu odsúdený právoplatným rozsudkom medzinárodného súdu zriadeného na základe medzinárodného práva verejného, ktorého právomoc uznala Slovenská republika, alebo právoplatným rozsudkom súdu Slovenskej republiky.

4. Key points

• Slovakia specifically criminalises the denial of the Holocaust, as well as the denial of the crimes of fascist, communist or similar regimes.
• Additionally, Slovakia prohibits the public denial, approval, dispute, gross trivialization, or attempts to justify genocide, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, or war crimes.
• Unlike the ban on denying genocides, the Holocaust denial ban does not require the act to be likely to incite violence or hatred against a group of persons or a member thereof.
• The sanction for Holocaust denial may include imprisonment ranging from six months to three years.

5. Background

Slovakian “memory laws”, including the Holocaust denial ban, should be seen in the broader context of transitional justice that begun in the wake of the collapse of the state-socialist system in 1989 – when the country was still a part of Czechoslovakia, as a consequence of the peaceful Velvet Revolution – that was eventually followed by Czechoslovakia’s dissolution into two successor states. In the initial state of decommunization, firstly laws marking the transition were adopted – such as the “Law on Judicial Rehabilitation (119/1990)”, the “Act No. 403/1990 Coll. on the Mitigation of the Consequences of Certain Property Losses”, and the “Constitutional Act No. 496/1990 Coll. on the Reversion of Property of the Communist Party to the People of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic”.^[2] Further laws can be seen as being part of the transitional justice process. One of them is particularly important in the context of this compendium: “Act No. 125/1996, on the Immorality and Illegality of the Communist Regime”, adopted in 1996.^[3] It explains why the later “denial bans” in Slovakia target the communist crimes as well – not only the crimes of Nazism. Holocaust denial, as well as fascist and communist ideological propaganda have been a criminal offence in Slovakia since 2001 (the law since expired in 2005, just as the currently applicable Section 422d Criminal Code came into force).^[4] Today the scope of denial bans also includes genocide, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity – so it is particularly broad.

6. Application

Article 422d of the Criminal Code was not always applied when cases of Holocaust denial and hate speech have occurred. In 2016, a representative for the far-right “People’s Party – Our Slovakia” (ĽSNS) Milan Mazurek was not prosecuted for denying the Holocaust on a social network. Some lawyers, such as the chairman of Transparency International Slovakia, Pavel Nechala, commenting on the case, agreed with the conclusion of the police to close the case, arguing that even though “these views are dangerous, they have to be fought differently than through repressive forces”. ^[5] However, following the victory of the centre-right coalition in March 2020, several new cases were opened, among them, the case against Marian Kotleba, chairman of the ĽSNS and a member of Slovakian parliament. In October 2020, Kotleba was found guilty of promoting a movement and ideology that aims to suppress civil rights and democracy. The case was pending while Kotleba appealed to the Supreme Court of Slovakia.^[6] Kotleba’s crime involved the use of symbols of Nazism. He was prosecuted after presenting three families with checks for €1,488 euros in March 2017 on the anniversary of the Slovak state’s establishment on the eve of the Second World War in 1939. The number 1,488 has a symbolic meaning for neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Ultimately, in 2022, Kotleba was found guilty by Slovakia’s Supreme Court of supporting a movement “aimed at suppressing fundamental human rights”. However, the judges dismissed part of the lower court’s ruling that had convicted him for illegally using neo-Nazi symbols.^[7]

7. Controversies

Historically, there were some controversies related to the freedom of expression in Slovakia – and the attempts to use law and the courts to limit the freedom of speech. In the 1990s, the influential Slovak politician and Minister of Culture at that time, Dušan Slobodník, sued poet Ľubomír Feldek for defamation. The poet had published a statement saying that “Dušan Slobodník became Minister of Culture and his fascist past immediately came to light”, referencing Slobodník’s involvement in an SS training course as a teenager at the age of 17 at the time of the First Slovak Republic. The Supreme Court voted in Slobodník’s favour. The case went to the European Court of Human Rights which ruled in 2001 that Slovakia had violated freedom of speech (Article 10 of the European Convention of the Human Rights) by doing so.^[8]   It seems that far-right and neo-Nazi movements are a persistent problem in Slovakia. The issue of Nazi salutes by LSNS party members did not impact the party’s standing among voters, who made it the fourth most popular party in Slovakia in the 2020 parliamentary election with a support of 8% of the electorate. Kotleba and his party’s members openly back Slovakia’s legacy of collaboration with the Nazi regime during the Second World War. Milan Mazurek, a member of the LSNS party already mentioned above, became the first Slovak lawmaker to lose his parliamentary seat in 2019, after he was convicted for the use of racist language against the Roma community. In 2019, the Supreme Court dismissed a request by the country’s prosecutor general to ban Kotleba’s party as an “extremist group”, ruling that the prosecutor general failed to provide enough evidence that the party violated the Slovak constitution, and aimed to destroy the country’s democracy.^[9]

8. Further reading

• Eszter Bartha, Slávka Otčenášová, ‘Memory and politics: “totalitarian” and “revisionist” approaches to the study of the Holocaust in Hungary and Slovakia’ [2019] Volume 7, No. 1, Central European Papers, pp. 9-24.
• Michael Shafir, ‘Denying the Holocaust where it happened’, in Ronit Lentin (ed),  Re-presenting the Shoah for the Twenty-first Century(2004), p. 195.
• ‘Holocaust denial in criminal law. Legal frameworks in selected EU Member States’, Briefing, (European Parliament, 26 Janauary 2022) <https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_BRI(2021)698043>.
• ‘Memory Laws in European and Comparative Perspective’, MELA Project, <https://melaproject.org/>.

^[1] Available here: https://www.zakonypreludi.sk/zz/2005-300#p422d. ^[2] For more information, see ‘Slovakia’ (Transitional Justice and Memory in the EU. Slovakia) <http://www.proyectos.cchs.csic.es/transitionaljustice/content/slovakia>. ^[3] Ibid. ^[4] Amendment adding § 261 to the Criminal Code; the provision expired in 2005, see ktorým sa mení zákon č. 140/1961 Zb. Trestný zákon v znení neskorších predpisov, vyhlásené: 29.11.2001 [Act no. 140/1961 Criminal Code of 29 November 2001] <https://static.slov-lex.sk/pdf/SK/ZZ/2001/485/ZZ_2001_485_20020101.pdf>. ^[5] ‘Holocaust denial in criminal law. Legal frameworks in selected EU Member States’ (European Parliament) p. 12. ^[6] Ibid. ^[7] ‘Slovakian far-right leader loses mandate as MP over neo-Nazi symbols, court decides’ (Euronews, 5 April 2022) <https://www.euronews.com/2022/04/05/slovakian-far-right-leader-loses-mandate-as-mp-over-neo-nazi-symbols-court-decides>. ^[8] European Court Of Human Rights, Case Of Feldek v. Slovakia (Application No. 29032/95), Judgment, Strasbourg, 12 July 2001. ^[9] ‘Slovakian far-right leader loses mandate as MP over neo-Nazi symbols, court decides’ (Euronews, 5 April 2022), <https://www.euronews.com/2022/04/05/slovakian-far-right-leader-loses-mandate-as-mp-over-neo-nazi-symbols-court-decides>.