The rights of unvaccinated in Spain will be defended in court

The Spanish human rights association Liberum has filed a number of claims with the court, demanding that persons responsible for inciting hatred against those who have not yet received the COVID-19 vaccine should be held accountable.  In its appeal, the association refers, in particular, to article 510 of the Spanish Criminal Code.  The article includes incitement to discrimination, hatred or violence for various reasons (including those based on beliefs and illness) and provides punishment of up to prison term of one to three years.

In addition to the Criminal Code of Spain, representatives of the organization also refer to a number of articles of the country's Constitution, extracts from the EU regulations and international law. According to the initiators of the process, the unsubstantiated dissemination of information about citizens unvaccinated against COVID-19, as the culprits of the next wave of infections, has recently become a frequent thing.

This, according to representatives of Liberum, is a serious attack on the freedoms and rights of citizens.

One of the first media outlets accused of human rights violations by Liberum was the Spanish newspaper ABC. In the title of one of the publications, the media called the state of affairs in the European Union ‘a pandemic of the unvaccinated’. According to the human rights activists, such an indication of citizens who refused to get vaccine (there are about 84 million people in the EU) may serve as a sign of undisguised discrimination. The representatives of the association call the words of Jens Spahn, who heads the German Ministry of Health, the grounds for such statements.

Another target for attack from the Asociación Liberum was the Spanish socialist politician Javier Solana. The organization wants to prosecute the former EU secretary general (he held this post from 1999 to 2009), for his comment on Twitter. On November 13, commenting on the publication of DW, the 79-year-old politician wrote that those who were not vaccinated were responsible for the new wave of the pandemic.

A press release published by Liberum on liberumasociacion.org notes the recklessness and provocative nature of such messages. The authors of the petition, filed with the Madrid court, call such actions an abuse of the right to freedom of speech, as well as unsubstantiated attacks on the norms of respect and mutual tolerance.

The organization's website emphasizes that vaccination does not provide a complete immunization for those who are vaccinated.

WHO also recognizes that absolutely everyone can get infected, but not just those people who, for whatever reason, refused to get the vaccine.

According to the publication of the diario16.com media outlet, the human rights association is trying to draw public attention to the situation in which the civil society finds itself. While politicians refuse to take responsibility, the freedoms and rights of citizens (labor, social, civil) continue to decline, and a harmful weakening of trust is taking place in human relations.