A Barcelona court has sentenced the bus driver who in May 2020 tried to remove a veil and expelled a North African woman and her three children from the vehicle with six months in prison and a fine of 1,800 euros, which Racist insult. The group of passengers celebrated In its sentence, the Court of the Third Section of Barcelona condemns the driver for crimes against fundamental rights and obliges him to compensate the victim and her children with 3,383 euros, for which Transport should respond in a helpful manner. Metropolitanos de Barcelona (TMB) being the company that employed them.
The sentence proves the xenophobic aggression that occurred on May 29, 2020, when the woman boarded a V-19 line bus to Santuario de Barcelona with her three children aged 14, 10 and 3. The woman approached the defendant after one of her daughter’s cards did not work properly in the verification machine, but the driver gave her no indication of the incident but “took the opportunity to indicate her ethnic origin”, with expressions such as ” You come here to live by the story”.
Subsequently, as the victim and her children were seated on the bus, the defendant continued to make comments about the family’s origins and three stops further, he addressed the woman saying she should leave the bus, “which was celebrated by some By passengers”, according to the sentence. The woman decided to get off the bus and, once on the ground, prepared to take a picture of the license plate, prompting the driver to suddenly stop and get out. vehicle, hurling racist insults such as “Fucking Moor” or “Go to your country”.
At the same time, adds the court, the defendant made a gesture of removing the veil from the woman’s head and photographing her with his own cell phone, for which the passenger’s children stood beside her to protect her. At that moment, “because of the anger that was overwhelming him”, the defendant grabbed the arms of the children in order to separate them – he tried to pull one of them by the hair -, causing superficial injuries, until he Couldn’t contain his attitude and got back on the bus after several passers by, who were critical of his conduct.
In the court’s opinion, the defendant’s actions, his expressions and the “violent form used” have “substantial potential to harm the dignity of the person to whom they are addressed.” “Their apparently outrageous character and invitation to leave the country can only be explained by the denial of the right to the development of a free personality, by the denial of the individual and of the status of the citizen, from the point of view of exclusive intolerance,” it adds. Decision.
Furthermore, the court believes that the defendant’s expressions “contain cultural and historical reasons as well as a clear contempt and denigration of Maghrebis as inferior peoples.” For the court, “it is not about simple insult” or mere discussion for a specific reason and, in any case, “there are many ways, if one wants to reproach another person for something, and our This does not happen in culture, precisely, reduction in derogatory expressions and concepts”.
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