THIRTEENTH SESSION OF FORUM ON MINORITY ISSUES Speech, Social Media and Minorities FRIDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2020 15:00-17:45 (local time in Geneva) Item 5: Towards a safer space for minorities: positive initiatives to address online hate speech: the role of national human rights institutions, human rights organizations, civil society and other stakeholders TRIEST NGO - SPEECH: Trieste, historically and culturally, is a multicultural and multilingual city and the Slovenian mother tongue community has been part of the social fabric of the territory for centuries. In recent years we have been witnessing an increes of Italian nationalistic hatred towards the Slovenian component of the Territory of Trieste, triggered above all, but not only, by the right-wing political component and easily conveyed through the social media Facebook. These messages, tolerated - or worse - also propagated by Italian institutional figures, tend to present the Slovenian autochthonous community as alien, unwanted and without their own rights, first of all that of the use of their mother tongue in the relationship with public institutions, thus continuing ideally with this conduct the "ethnic reclamation" begun in 1924 by fascism. After the war, following the Nazi-fascist crimes, the international community recognized the need to sanction the proclamation of Fundamental Human Rights with the commitment of all UN member States to the concrete fulfillment of respect for the highest moral principles, the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual, so that certain prevarications could no longer be repeated. The equal rights of the use of the Slovenian language enshrined in the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty, the international conventions against discrimination and the protection laws (38/2001) too often remain so only on paper, unknown and ignored, if not really tacitly rejected even by public authorities and Italian institutional figures in Trieste. Furthermore, in 70 years there has never been official stigmatization by the Italian administrative authorities on the serious consequences of the fascist racial laws suffered by the Slovenian community of Trieste. This deliberate lack has made it possible even today to carry out a partial historical rereading of the events that took place in that period, of which the continuous propaganda on the “foibe” is the clearest example. This harmful constant flow of media spread through social media and the media, completely out of control, has generated an increase in alarming episodes, which have also resulted in situations of inadmissible violence. At the source of this intolerance are the following factors: a) disinformation, that is the intentional and lack of correct information by the local media concerning the protection laws and the relative rights of subjects belonging to the Slovenian linguistic community; b) misinformation, that is the use of information channels as a political tool to influence public opinion, especially by Italian nationalist parties supported by the ample space dedicated to them, with messages of incitement to intolerance also conveyed thanks to Facebook pages of local web newspapers with a significant number of followers.