speech today is all about speech Ted is all about speech it's through speech that we spreads good ideas however it's also through speech and through other forms of expression that we may spread hate and today I want to spend a little bit of time for us to address the question of hate speech now think of the latest news headline the most recent issue regarding hate speech that grabbed your attention it will probably be a global story and it will be the repercussions of hate speech across borders that has captured the attention of us of politicians
of policymakers around the world sometimes the repercussions are very bloody sometimes the consequences continue over months it's it's as if the the hatred and the response to that film that cartoon that article that book becomes resuscitated a long time later and continues to plague us but I want to suggest that we should you know if I speak to my seven-year-old if we speak to five-year-olds we would say that's not very nice thing to say darling okay but as an international community or as a national community we should distinguish between different kinds of hate speech and
sometimes we confuse them and that's a problem because there should be a well calibrated and careful attention to different kinds of hate speech in fact we should sometimes intentionally ignore hate speech the High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said a few weeks ago that we should sometimes deny the oxygen of publicity to hate speech because otherwise we feed it ourselves a trashy film a trashy YouTube video book novel article it might have got some viewers some readers but you know should we really fuel that by giving its undue attention it's here where it's worth
considering different kinds of things that we often package together as hate speech as I said these are all not very nice you wouldn't encourage your five-year-old to engage in it but as an international community let's be a little bit more careful about what we're talking about perhaps we're talking about discriminatory speech this could be in comedy it could be this can become part of cultures and it's very unfortunate it might be hate speech so it's increased in gravity and is less pleasant even less pleasant it could be in citement to violence so that's you're getting
others to act and to join you in that hatred and then incitement to terrorism incitement to genocide that I will not be discussing today and it's that intersection between hate speech and incitement to violence that's I want us to concentrate on today what is the difference as I said even those five categories or types of speech that I suggested sometimes are all packaged together and labeled hate speech but strictly speaking wide when where do we draw the line between hate speech and incitement to violence and one a friend and a good author has given us
a rule of thumb and she says Susan Benesch says that incitement to violence is where my speech gets others to act and to act violently so it's not my act you don't you know you may consider the context you may consider my intense you may consider the actual words that I used but actually what matters in transitioning from hate speech to incitement to violence is how my speech incites others to act now all the pictures that came to your mind where you thought about hate speech and incitement of violence think about them and think of
the main actors and what I want to suggest here today is something that I don't think the international community you and I governments politicians and all those policymakers are giving enough attention to and that is that incitement of violence is much much worse where it is the government or government actors that are inciting to violence this seems very obvious if you think about the worst consequences of incitement to violence in the world today you may be thinking of the Holocaust you may be thinking of the Rwandan genocide and it is clear that government actors were
part of the incitements and why it becomes particularly worrisome and it might lead to serious consequences is because they have the power they're not even a political party that may gain power they don't have just a bunch of parliamentarians standing for the elections they are already in power they have the resources and often there is a build up time if you go to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington or any memorial to you know genocide etc you will find that actually there are traces of the build-up of that incitement of violence by the government of
the time I want to look at just one example of course there are other examples to draw from and indeed even in Iran I could have drawn from many other examples of minorities are Zuri's kurds beluche arabs christians jews that to one extent or another are currently suffering from incitement from the governments of Iran what I want to look at though are is the situation of the Baha'i zin Iran and how the government for 33 years in Iran has Bill been building up its project of destroying this religious community first we'll look at a few
slides to see what have been the the media what media has the government used in order to build up this incitement and secondly we'll look at a few slides about just a few of the consequences of this 33 years of persecution this slide is used in many Iranian anti-government websites so a bhai is depicted with the shroud of death calling you to death so the high skill you or the Baha'i faith is destructive this is not a trailer to a horror movie again this is a depiction of bajas by the Iranian government in its websites
also in column a a news report from last year in Iran this is a 2011 not a story a reality here you need to have a little bit more backgrounds here there's a suggestion of tombstones burning it creates a picture of a cultish dangerous community and again it's a depiction of buys in Iran it's set against a holy place for behind the shrine of wahala so and this is a book from 2008 from the city of Shiraz we're behind depicted as being deceitful it's a story but the storyline is about my eyes and how deceitful
they are so we have this picture of horror death they kill you they're deceitful and I forgot to say in the earlier slide that the calamy website said that PI's get together on Muslim holy days and they engage in corrupt and immoral practices I'm sure you can imagine what they talked about so when we're talking about incitement to violence we are no longer actually just talking about speech we are talking about consequences and the acts that results from that speech so what are just a few of the traces of the results of this build-up of
incitement by the Iranian government now as I said the incitement here is not alone the incitement is in the hands of governments so whether in this instance or whether in Holika the Holocaust or whether in the and I am NOT comparing suffering I think that's incredibly distasteful but I just want to be to suggest to you that when the government is involved there is a project of destruction and the incitement of violence by the government is parts of the tools that they are using so in the case of the Bizon iran this is again a
Baha'i holy place the house of the bob in Shiraz 1979 and this is what was done to it now it's even razed to the ground and is roundabout and it's not only community properties that have been destroyed this is a house in our birthday it's a 2008 picture and this is what they've done to an individual member of the Baha'i faith and this is what they've done a bulldozer arrived and destroyed the property even architectural gems this is the house of the father of the founder of the Baha'i faith and in Tehran this was destroyed
in 2004 you might think for cultural and historical reasons a building might be spared but because of the association then that too was destroyed of course there is a it's not just physical destruction there's a strong human story and reality there as well these are seven representatives of the Baha'i community of Iran who have been in prison since spring 2009 so you know along with the project of destruction the incitement in the hands of governments to 200 people have been killed thousands have been tortured and many are facing prison sentences I just want to say
that when we talk about hate speech we often think about hate speech Beyond Borders and that should of course get attention as well but what is even more grievous is where a government has had a long-standing project itself the government itself is spearheading engineering that hate speech and incitement and I think we should be particularly vigilant of that kind of incitement even if it is within the borders of one country thank you
