I. Background: Basic Hypotheses
a) There is no genocide, nor genocidal murder, without prior dehumanization, demonization, education to hatred, and incitement to murder. (This has been the case not only with antisemitism, which led to the Holocaust, but also in all other known cases in the recent past, such as Rwanda.) Practically speaking, the two forms of hate speech that should be ostracized are dehumanization, and incitement to murder.
b) These forms of hate speech are transmitted and disseminated through popular conduits for opinions and ideas such as the media, the schools, and the pulpits.
c) These same conduits are also of great importance in preventing genocide and genocidal murder, in two primary and vital areas:
i) Identifying and locating signs and trends in order to provide early warning;
ii) Helping outline ways of countering such dangerous trends.

II. The Most Acute Current Questions
The world media do not provide information about these malignant influences for various reasons:
a) Insufficient public interest in something not perceived as ”news” – in contrast to events – except that in this case, when you pay attention to the event, it is already too late to prevent it. Instances of dissemination of hatred are not normally seen as worthy of media attention.
b) Occasionally, the media avoids reporting on these issues, presumably so as not to enhance hate propaganda by publicizing it.
c) These issues are complicated and require more profound and extensive knowledge, which is not always at the command of media personnel.
d) The above situation of insufficient media interest is often exacerbated by personal bias and fashionable views.
e) The justified fear that a blanket condemnation of hate speech could be detrimental to free speech.

III. Recommendations
a) Establishing an international apparatus for examining the issue of hate speech as understood here – dehumanization, and incitement to murder – wherever there is a conflict that has the potential to escalate into genocide. This apparatus should provide information, analyze it, and issue early warnings and policy recommendations.
b) Setting uniform criteria and definitions for "hate speech” for all relevant conflicts.
c) Since the issue of malignant influences is cultural, logically this falls within the purview of UNESCO. However, since this issue is also tangential to significant political issues, UNESCO cannot be the sole body responsible.
d) It is therefore proposed that a proposal should be presented by interested governments to the General Assembly and/or to the Security Council, condemning dehumanization and incitement to mass murder, and ostracizing any state or government or political body engaged in such propaganda.

Appendix A: Media and Genocide:
The Rwandan Case on Trial
On December 3 of this year, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established by the U.N. in late 1994, convicted three Rwandan media executives of genocide. They were charged with using a radio station and newspaper to incite Rwanda's Hutu majority against the Tutsis, 70 percent of whom – at least 800,000 people – were killed over the course of 100 days in 1994.

One of the three men convicted was the owner of the bimonthly newspaper Kangura, Hassan Ngeze, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for "poisoning the minds” of his readers against the Tutsis. The other two, who also received life sentences, were Ferdinand Nahimana, founder of the popular radio station RTLM, and Jean- Bosco Barayagwiza, one of the station's board members. The station, according to the judges, openly called for the extermination of the Tutsis, even broadcasting the names of specific people to be targeted.

The presiding judge in the Rwanda cases, Navanethem Pillay of South Africa, ruled that the RTLM broadcasts "collectively conveyed a message of ethnic hatred and called for violence against the Tutsi population. This message was heard around the world…” Pillay referred specifically to a broadcast on April 25, 1994, at the height of the massacres, in which Nahimana spoke about the "war of media, words, newspapers, and radio stations,” which he described as a complement to bullets.

Addressing Nahimana, she said: "You were fully aware of the power of words, and you used the radio, the medium of communication with the widest public reach, to disseminate hatred and violence... Without a firearm, machete, or any physical weapon, you caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians… You were a known academic, a professor of history at the national university of Rwanda, and you used the radio to disseminate hatred and violence… Instead of using the media to promote human rights, you used it to attack and destroy human rights."

Ngeze, also a member of CDR, was convicted for "order, instigating, and aiding and abetting acts of genocide,” as well as for his writings in Kangura. Tutsi women, according to the judges, were specific targets for persecution in the newspaper, through their "femme fatale” portrayal as "seductive agents of the enemy.” Judge Pillay noted, "The power of the media to create and destroy fundamental human values comes with great responsibility… Those who control such media are accountable for its consequences."

The Rwanda International Criminal Tribunal made its first conviction in 1998, when Jean-Paul Akayesu was found guilty of nine counts of genocide and crimes against humanity. Akayesu was the mayor of Taba, a small town in central Rwanda. In addition to charging Akayesu with failing, in his capacity as mayor, to maintain law and order, the judges also claimed he had incited genocide at a public gathering on April 9, 1994. They said he urged the crowd to unite in order to eliminate the "Inkotanyi,” a derogatory term for Tutsis, and that his words were understood to be a call to murder them. Akayesu was sentenced to three life terms plus 80 years.

The verdicts handed down by on December 3 bring the total number of such verdicts to 16. The tribunal was established by the U.N. in Tanzania, three months after the 1994 killings. In its 29-page summary of the latest judgments, which was read aloud in court, the judges noted that they were addressing issues that had not come before an international court in decades. In fact, the last such conviction was made in 1946 by the Nuremberg tribunal against Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher, for incitement to murder Jews.

Sources:
Material on Tutsi women:
www.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/tribunals/rwanda/2003/1203media.htm
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/0/9785b5ed0d1ed7a085256df10069f96c?

OpenDocument
Akayesu's sentence and date of conviction:
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/readings/justice.html
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/60320/1/.html
http://www.iht.com/cgi–bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=120259
http://www.rstl.com/rwanda.htm