It ain’t a coincidence that it was in 2021 that the UN decided to launch an “International Day Against Hate Speech” annually on June 18th – which this year was on Tuesday. The point is that after witnessing the escalating horrible genocides — starting in the 1990s in Rwanda, then the Balkans, Sudan, and now Gaza — it’s clear that while there’s no single cause for mass violence, hate speech preceded every one of the genocidal actions. And that’s as good a place as any to start doing something about this horror.
The thread that runs through hate speech is dehumanization of the target group – which then normalizes making them the brunt of the genocidal actions. In Rwanda, the hate speech was disseminated over radio, and before anyone realized the enormity of the gameplan, almost a million Tutsis had been hacked to death by their Hutu neighbours, backed by Hutu troops. For years, the Hutus had denigrated the Tutsis as inyenzi, or “cockroaches”, and as inzoka, or “snakes”. Because the Tutsis were taller than the Hutus, the latter used the coded message “cut down the tall trees” as the killing frenzy exploded. Who cares about destroying cockroaches?
Social media has now multiplied the dissemination of hate speech a millionfold, and across the globe, we see its effects. Can anyone think that if the Israelis had seen the Palestinians as equal human beings, they’d be bombing children in their beds? Or would the Arabized northerners in Sudan be killing off the Southern Africans as we speak, and nobody seems to want to know about it? And in our dear Mudland, we know all about hate speech, don’t we?? What else could’ve made violence erupt sporadically every few years in our ethnically divided country? As recently as Mid-June 2022, at Mon Repos Market, dozens of Indian Guyanese vendors were beaten, had their stalls vandalized and goods looted by African Guyanese youths.
It’s very heartening to see the UN collaborating with the ERC in this week’s efforts to eliminate hate speech. It has been recognized that the greatest danger lies with the politicians who’re deploying hate speech on social media to define the Government – and by extension its supporters – in very incendiary terms that’s gonna for sure cause an explosion before long. Rather ironically – but deliberately – the Government is accused of committing “genocide” against African Guyanese – when in fact the Government has unleashed a very high profile program to attract that demographic to vote for them in the election scheduled for end next year!!
One of the hate-mongers has been charged under the cybercrime laws for allowing the most extreme hate speech to be used against four named top officials of the Government – that they be beheaded!!
The court must deal with this example condignly!!
…Mad Maduro
You gotta hand it to Mad Maduro; he’s working non-stop to take over our Essequibo, even as we then just react to his initiatives. Over at the ICJ, he requested that he get months more to file a reply that could’ve taken weeks. Just continuing his war of attrition against us!! Your Eyewitness thinks he’s gotten his way once again, since there’s been no announcement from the ICJ.
But Mad Maduro hasn’t stopped there; he’s intensifying his diplomatic onslaught by sending envoys to Russia and China to firm up his alliances. And this time he’s going even further – he’s requested their support to join BRICS+, which is now up to 20 members and counting. If he’s accepted, that means he’ll have access to their financing initiatives while using his oil revenues to continue building his military capabilities. Your Eyewitness has been emphasizing that we may not have as much oil as Venezuela, but we’re about to eclipse them in production!!
Maybe we can join BRICS+ also??
…our local retailers?
A group of sixty-five Guyanese retailers have gone public with accusations that they’re facing unfair competition from unregistered Chinese supermarkets and hardware stores that are popping up like Jumbie Umbrellas!!
Do we really need this??
