Drunken Man Punches Somali Passenger, Legacy Media Says He's Convicted for 'Hate Speech'

Another day, more evidence of virtue-signalling legacy media bias

A new ‘incident’ concerning ‘hate speech’ has happened here, hence my translation.

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Convicted for Racist Remarks on the Ferry Trip from Moss to Horten

By Nils Fridtjof Skumsvoll, NRK, 19 March 2024 [source]

‘Damn Arabs’, the man is said to have shouted, among other things, before shortly afterwards he punched his fellow passenger in the face.

The incident happened one morning in February last year.

The man in his 30s was very drunk [in the morning] when he took a seat at a table in the cafe on board the Bastø ferry. Everyone agrees on that.

He is said to have talked loudly on the phone, and attracted a lot of attention from the other guests [while being ‘very drunk one morning’].

‘Speak Norwegian when you are in Norway’

After the telephone conversation was finished, the accused went up to a boy with a Somali background, according to the witness, and wanted an answer as to why the latter had been staring at him.

The boy stated that he did not speak Norwegian, but the man still demanded an answer.

Another passenger, who is himself from Somalia, has explained that he got in touch to ask if he could speak the same language as the boy, and possibly help with translation.

Directed at these two [the Somali boy and the Somali man], according to the witness, the [very drunken] man then said ‘damn Arabs’, ‘SOBs’ [orig. horunge], ‘speak Norwegian, for fuck’s sake’, ‘speak Norwegian when you are in Norway’ [orig. snakk norsk når du er i Noreg], and the like.

The accused then put his index finger on the arm of the man who wanted to help. To this the [latter] reacted by taking off his jacket and asked the intoxicated passenger to remove himself.

This resulted in the defendant hitting the co-passenger in the face, which led to the two of them fighting each other.

Several passengers and people from the crew had to intervene to separate the two men.

Sentenced to Prison

In court, the defendant had a problem with thinking so much about the incident itself.

He nevertheless acknowledged the relationship, but believed that one of the people he was arguing with must have lifted a chair before hitting himself.

None of the witnesses had observed this, nor was it something the court believed.

The man was convicted both for making hateful statements and violence against the fellow passenger.

The sentence was 21 days in prison.

The accused’s attorney, Knut Henrik Strømme, states that he has not yet looked again at the verdict together with his client.

‘We have not yet decided on a possible appeal’, he says to NRK.

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Bottom Lines

That ‘story’ might make international headlines, hence don’t be fooled by it.

This is but a wonderful (/sarcasm) example of what happens if you’re ‘very drunk’ in the morning. Sure, there’s some ‘hate speech’ involved, but to be honest, and while I don’t share this drunkard’s sentiments, 21 days in prison for starting a fight in public is either quite little or very strange as far as verdicts go.

I do consider the header extremely misleading, for the man wasn’t convicted for ‘hate speech’ only but also for inciting violence (i.e., assault and battery). I wonder why that little factoid is omitted from the header (/sarcasm).

According to the Norwegian gov’t,

speech that spreads hatred towards other people must not be tolerated. Some speech is prohibited under Norwegian law and is subject to prosecution.

There’s a none-too-subtle line between ‘speech that…must not be tolerated’ and grounds for prosecution.

And no clear definition of ‘some speech…subject to prosecution’ is offered.

I do wonder, though, why there is so much emphasis on eyewitness statements in this piece. Granted, I’ve never been on that particular ferry service, but all the ferries I ever took in Norway have surveillance cameras in the cafeteria area.

What a strange world.