Why hate speech should scare us

The wrong words in a multiethnic environment can lead to mayhem and even genocide. Yes, genocide! Genocide is a product of premeditated thought, chiefly caused by spiteful comments against a person, gender, religion, sexual course, country, state, local council, village town and so forth, extremely fuelled by political undertone.  Such malicious comments called as hate […]

The wrong words in a multiethnic environment can lead to mayhem and even genocide. Yes, genocide! Genocide is a product of premeditated thought, chiefly caused by spiteful comments against a person, gender, religion, sexual course, country, state, local council, village town and so forth, extremely fuelled by political undertone.
 Such malicious comments called as hate speeches. A speech like that has led countries into wars against the other and ethnic groups against the other. However, countries and groups are not sleeping on their oars watching this swell. The concern on the use of inflammatory language moved a group like the Museum’s Centre for the Prevention of Genocide for a discussion among specialists on February 5, 2013.
 Its purpose was to map out ways to discourage the use of language that incites people to genocidal conduct, where the rights of speech of people would not be infringed upon. This concerns the United Nations so much that it has an arm known as Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect.  
Countries and nongovernmental organisations have done in-depth research to devise ways to implement laws against speech that leads to harm from the right of speech. Many targeted populations are called obnoxious names like ‘beasts’ or ‘asshole’ as a way of violence against them, of which has most often backfire leading to genocide.
 But while in some countries people seek redress under civil or criminal law when displayed with such dehumanizing speech or conduct or write or broadcast against their race, religion and gender, others take to violence. One place where the world is sceptical about is the Internet which is often used by persons to incite comments that can lead to violence and mass killings, because the use of speech in the Internet is not regulated.
 This avenue is mostly used by political critics or politicians against the other in order to mislead the unsuspecting public so that their position would sound politically, economically and socially correct against their prey. In an investigation conducted by Karen Eltis, Loyola University Chicago School of Law 2011 Law Journal Conference, New York University law Professor Jeremy Waldron submitted the parity rights of sufferers as a countervailing curiosity to instigators’ freedom of speech, saying “The question is about the direct targets of the abuse. Can their lives be led … and their worst fears dispelled, in a social environment polluted by these materials?”
  In Kenya in 2007 during the country’s general elections, over 1, 400 persons were killed aftermath. Kenyans who cast their votes peacefully did not expect any forms of chaos, let alone, the one that took many lives, but for hate speech.
 The ethnic-based uprising started when the Kenyan electoral commission announced that there was a technical problem with its electronic vote-counting scheme. This sent jitters into the spines of the people that a section had lacerated into the machine to cause irregularities in the counting process, hence the mass killings that followed that have been labelled as genocide. The International Criminal Court (ICC), later arraigned a Kenyan radio broadcaster for transmissions that allegedly triggered the post-election violence of 2007-2008.
 The same problem occurred in Rwanda and Bosnia in the mid-1990s, when both countries experienced genocide and war respectively. It was after the genocides in Rwanda that the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda recorded the first “incitement to genocide” case in the world, leading to the conviction of radio broadcasters, a newspaper editor, and even a pop star for the misdemeanour. The ICC in 1995 criminalized Jean-Paul Akayesu <http://www.un.org/ictr/english/judgements/akayesu.html>, a former Rwandan Bourgmestre (otherwise known as mayor) for provocation to genocide. It was believed that Akayesu gave a speech that was instantaneously pushed people to commit mass murders.
Many groups and organizations like the MacArthur Foundation, the US Institute of Peace, the International Criminal Tribunal, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, African Media Leaders, Media Initiative Against Hate Speech, and many other s, are involved in efforts to impede the use of hate speech and genocide as methods of expressing anger. A much more severe consequence of hate speech which is genocide can be averted if people use less harmful statements that are not believable, dishonourable or undetected by the population. Genocidal crimes and violence should be prevented and the trouble of methodical encouragement to hatred prevented.
 Government at all levels should make illegal such acts, cruel and state-arranged hate misinformation under national and international laws. Authorities should treat organized incitement to hatred as a form of harassment, as was upheld by the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which also was applicable to Kenya.
Nigeria should be proactive in taking action to curb hate speech that has become a regular fare on the campaign trails, particularly of the major political parties. It is an unhealthy trend that bodes ill for the nation and inter-communal harmony.
 Odimegwu Onwumere writes from Port Harcourt< [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>;>