Consider the counterfactual: if hate speech laws were not in place, would the probability of a whistleblower in the police, or a journalist picking up the story from one of the victims go up or down?

> What the article does mention is that local officials and other agencies were "wary of identifying ethnic origins for fear of upsetting community cohesion, or being seen as racist", which is mere cowardice.

Yes, not openly resisting improper application of hate speech laws (or any law) is always cowardice, but cowardice is common, and that's exactly what all unscrupulous officials bank on. Most people respond to even subtle incentives, like implications of racism, and hate speech classifications are even less subtle.

Hate speech laws don't have to involve a gulag to have chilling effects and cause real harm, as this case shows quite well I think. That the possibility of being called racist was even remotely effective as a threat is a downstream effect of accepting the legitimacy of hate speech laws IMO.

> And I think the fact that those parties immediately jumped on this in the media shows that it's very much not something that'll get you thrown in the gulag for discussing.

It's hard to be censorious once something has achieved enough public exposure.

In any case, this all seems to be somewhat besides the point, because how a law is applied in practice is less compelling than how broadly it can be interpreted by future officials who may be less compassionate or scrupulous. As I've been saying all along: what does the letter of the law say?

You keep saying that I shouldn't rely on implication, but the law is all about implication. What could possibly matter more than the implications of how the law is written?