The mayor of Ripoll (Girona), parliamentary deputy and leader of Aliança Catalana (AC), Sílvia Orriols, reaffirmed herself this Thursday before the justice in statements she made in May 2022, when she stated on a television program that “in an Islamic Catalonia, there would be mass rapes.” Orriols appeared today before the judge of plaza 1 of the contentious-administrative section of the Girona court of first instance.
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Once the oral hearing was held, the magistrate must decide whether to uphold or annul the 10,001 euro fine that the Generalitat imposed on Orriols for statements about immigration on the now-defunct 8TV. An anonymous person reported telematically to the Office of Equal Treatment and Non-Discrimination of the Generalitat some statements that the then councilor of the Front Nacional in opposition in Ripoll made in a television debate on May 29, 2022.
The Department of Equality and Feminisms sanctioned Orriols with a fine of 10,001 euros for those television statements, in which she speculated that the massive arrival of Muslim immigrants would mean that “in an Islamic Catalonia there would be gang rapes, genital mutilations.”
The case went to the Hate Crimes Prosecutor’s Office, which ruled out that it was a hate crime, basically because, among other things, it required that there was a dissemination that did not exist since, according to her lawyer, Jordi Coma, “the audience of that program had a 1% share,” in addition to 339 likes on X and 90 on Facebook.
Orriols did not comply with the sanction and, after exhausting all administrative channels, took the case to court. After exhausting the administrative route, Orriols has taken the fine from the Office of Equal Treatment and Non-Discrimination to the courts and the hearing for the appeal filed by Orriols against the sanction was held this Thursday.
Coma argued in his conclusions that the fine imposed on Orriols violates fundamental rights such as freedom of expression, ideological freedom, and political participation, and therefore requested the magistrate to uphold the appeal and annul the sanction issued by the Office of Equal Treatment and Non-Discrimination of the Generalitat.
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The Generalitat’s lawyer maintained that the right to freedom of expression does not prevail over others such as religious freedom and argued that Orriols’ words “fostered racism.”
During the conclusions, Orriols reproduced the statements made by the current AC leader during the 2022 debate. “I consider that allowing the massive entry of Muslim immigrants is a mistake that we can pay dearly for,” she said and insisted that “not all Muslims recognize European democracies and our civil laws.”
Last word
“They are governed by a religious law which is the sharia and, when they become a demographic majority, their supporters can impose themselves and end up imposing misogyny and homophobia on the entire population as well,” Orriols added generically, according to the lawyer.
At the end of the hearing, the magistrate offered a last word to Sílvia Orriols, who stated: “I simply reaffirm the statements I made on that television program which I consider to be in accordance with reality.”
Upon leaving the Palace of Justice, accompanied and acclaimed by about fifteen supporters, before the media she maintained: “We have reaffirmed the statements from that television program because it is what we believe and in fact reality also shows it, and we have no reason to be ashamed of thinking this way.”
