Woman charged with religious vilification over Facebook post - Australia

This is the sort of thing I'm talking about when I look at some of the vile stuff coming out of the US in regards to gays. In Australia they'd find themselves bought before the courts over inciting violence against a certain group of people. For example Pastor Swanson at the "kill the gays" religious liberty conference, where he openly discussed how and when to kill gay people. Here he'd be charged with an offence.

This example now shows it works both ways. An Australian woman who said on a Facebook post that all mosques should be burnt down when the doors are shut at prayer time, has found herself on the wrong side of the law. That is not OK to address an audience encouraging them to burn a mosque killing those inside.

"It was when Sweden were burning mosques down and I made a comment of: all mosques should be burnt down with the doors locked at prayer time! Probably not the best thing to write but that's my opinion, others commented after my post agreeing with it and unbeknown to myself it got a lot of likes, that is where their incitement charge is coming from. 

"Yesterday I got a call at work by the detective and he told me I was being charged. I told him how can I be charged for an opinion and how can I be charged with a religious vilification when I don't acknowledge those that are Muslims and those that follow the Quaran (sic) as a religion but as an evil, hateful ideology. 

"I am more than happy for it to go public, if I do nothing about it and let them win it goes against everything I stand for and I can't do that! I didn't want this or the publicity that will come with it but it is what it is and I'm not about to back down." 

Anna Brown, director of advocacy at the Human Rights Law Centre, said people needed to be aware that making a comment even on a private Facebook page counted as speech to an audience under the Act. 

"Under the Act, a message needs to have an audience in order to incite. So arguably even if the audience is limited on a private Facebook page, it is still an audience. 

"To publicly encourage people to burn to death people of a particular faith - as this woman has allegedly done on Facebook, is clearly unacceptable. 

"We have laws that aim to prevent harmful hate speech that incites violence, so it's understandable that the police would want to follow this matter up. Whether it's in the street or on social media, it's unacceptable and dangerous to actively call for the murder of other people." The Age