{UAH} We know it is wrong but, God help us, we still love hate speech - Comment -

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/We-know-it-is-wrong-but--God-help-us--we-still-love-hate-speech/-/434750/2271682/-/si5q3xz/-/index.html

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We know it is wrong but, God help us, we still love hate speech

It was a week like this 20 years ago when marauding bands of the Abahutu of Rwanda  – goaded on by their handlers at all levels, from the most remote hill to the centre of the capital, Kigali – went about hacking, spearing, hoeing, piercing, and shooting anyone they came across who was of the Abatutsi or suspected to be of them.

An orgy of extraordinary brutality that fit the epithet unimaginable, for indeed who could have imagined that in a mere 100 days almost a million people would be dead, consumed by a low-tech killing machine whose motor resided in the human mind?

Years after the genocide, some apologists attempted to explain that the genocide was triggered by the shooting down of (then) president Juvenal Habyarimana's plane over Kigali.

This requires more than a leap of faith: That after the plane crashed at about 8pm on the night of April 6, whoever was in charge sent info regarding the president's death; mobilised the Abahutu to take revenge against the Abatutsi – who had to be the ones who shot down the plane; ordered machetes from China; set up barricades across the country to stop and slaughter any apparent Mtutsi; drew up numerous lists of Abatutsi and where they lived... all in a couple of hours! Tell me another one.

No, the genocide was prepared for a long time. I had the opportunity to visit Kigali at the end of 1993 on a Red Cross sponsored visit, and I was able to take the temperature of the hatred that was simmering there.

Even the plane that took me from Nairobi to Kigali was full of people in MNDR kitengeshirts prancing up and down the aisle, spewing murderous venom and promising Armageddon.

But the most notorious purveyor of hate was Radiodiffusion Milles Collines, which came to symbolise the voice of the genocide. Its main task was to demonise Abatutsi by showing that they were somehow subhuman, not deserving to live.

Once the mind of a servile and ignorant people has been marinated with hate, the actual act of killing comes easily because the perpetrator's poisoned mind believes he is snuffing out lowlife; that is what his or her leaders said, and they must know better.

After Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945, the Nuremberg trials of Hitler's henchmen had to deal with the issue of hate propaganda and the role it plays in mass killings.

Since then, courtesy of numerous international conventions, it has become a crime to engage in hate speech that is designed to discriminate against a person or a group of people on the basis of their race, ethnicity or religious affiliation in a manner likely to result in their being placed in danger, attacked psychologically or physically, or killed.

That this happened in Rwanda and was singled out for serious censure – some hate propagandists have been jailed by ICTR – was proof that, long after Nuremberg, humanity was not yet out of the woods regarding hate propaganda.

And even after Rwanda's lesson, the hate merchants reared their ugly heads in Kenya's post-election violence. It has also been in evidence in recent conflicts in South Africa, Nigeria, South Sudan, Central African Republic and elsewhere.

This speaks to the dire need to keep working on the problem, and especially getting journalist and other media practitioners to recognise what constitutes hate speech and to desist from being drawn into it.

Journalists are usually lured into these evil scheme if they allow themselves to be political hatchet men and hatchet women at the expense of their calling, which is to be balanced, professional and coolheaded even over the most vexed and emotional issues.

A journalist may sympathise with a cause – we are not automatons, yet – but that does not take away the duty to present the different antagonists' points of view as faithfully as possible and to strive first to do no harm.

The African Media Initiative (AMI) recognises the importance of this recurring problem. AMI has organised a workshop in Kigali from April 17 around the issues attaching to hate speech. It couldn't be better timed.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: ulimwengu@jenerali.com

We know it is wrong but, God help us, we still love hate speech - Comment -
http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/We-know-it-is-wrong-but--God-help-us--we-still-love-hate-speech/-/434750/2271682/-/si5q3xz/-/index.html