Cyprus records over 1,000 Greek-language hate speech comments daily online

Nicosia, Cyprus. More than 1,000 hate speech comments are posted in Greek on Cypriot online sites every 24 hours, House human rights committee chair Christos Christofides said on Monday. He said prosecutions remain rare despite the volume of reported content.

Online content and criminal cases

Christofides told the committee that 48 per cent of the comments contained Nazi content, while 21 per cent involved Holocaust denial or distortion. A further 11 per cent were homophobic and 10 per cent targeted refugees.

Cyprus recorded 57 hate speech incidents in 2023, with 32 resulting in criminal cases. There were 54 incidents and 30 criminal cases in 2024, followed by 44 incidents and 18 criminal cases in 2025.

Police investigations

Head of the police cybercrime unit Andreas Anastasiades said two officers in each district had been assigned to cases involving incitement to violence, whether online or offline. However, no dedicated unit exists for the issue.

Anastasiades said police investigating anonymous accounts must seek identifying information from companies based in the United States, a process he described as time consuming.

“The companies reply that it’s ‘freedom of expression’ and refuse to close the account, while they often tell us that a VPN is being used and the user cannot be traced,” he said.

Legal measures and protection of minors

Justice ministry representative Anthi Papoutsidou said hate speech occurs online, in workplaces and in daily life, with vulnerable people usually targeted.

She said Cyprus has introduced several laws on the issue, most recently last year, and adopted a national strategy in 2021 addressing racism and violence against women.

Papoutsidou said the cabinet had approved a plan launched by the deputy research ministry to protect minors. The plan would restrict social media access for those aged 15 and under and include a regulatory instrument and an age-verification tool.