Yes, hate speech can lead to bombs and bodies

The grenade attacks at the Sunday prayer-cum-‘No’ meeting in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park have dominated the news all week.

For the families of the six killed and all of those injured, it must be hard to comprehend that somebody could actually do such a thing. It is hard for all of us to comprehend.

Naturally, theories have flown fast and furious. Fingers have been pointed at the ‘Yes’ camp.

But that does not make sense – if anything, the grenade attacks win sympathy for the proponents of ‘No’.

In which case, the fingers point the opposite way. But they are a motley crew there.

It is unthinkable that Christian leaders would go so far – even if the counterparts of the more fundamentalist, right-wing evangelicals have been known to do so in countries other than this.

It is slightly more plausible, if cynical to an extreme degree, that some of the political leaders associated with the ‘No’ campaign would do so.

The more conspiratorial possibility is that the perpetrators are the so-called watermelons – green on the outside, red on the inside – believed to be behind the changes smuggled in during the printing of the proposed Constitution of Kenya at the Government Printers.

This is a possibility that would make the investigations farcical to say the least.

And last but not least, there is the scapegoat possibility – the idea that this was the work of the more fundamentalist Muslims among us.

Aware of this, it is unsurprising that several Muslim organisations were among the first to condemn the grenade attacks.

What is clear, however, is that the stakes are higher in some people’s minds than we would have assumed.

That, for some people, the lessons of the last general election have not been learnt.

That, for some people, the idea that people should be left to freely decide from an informed position whether or not they want the new Constitution, is unacceptable.

That only they can decide what people should do. And that resorting to despicable tactics is thus justifiable.

These people, whoever they are, are – to use a well-worn phrase – on the wrong side of history.

They are ignoring what the higher-than-expected results of the voter registration exercise told us; that despite everything, Kenyans still believe in and will exercise the power of their vote.

And they are ignoring what 2007 and 2008 should have taught us – that there is a difference between advocating for a position held strongly, and believing that in such advocacy any means justify the desired ends.

With that in mind, it is hard not to view the recent actions of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission with approval and sympathy.

In trying to seize hold of their conceptually unclear mandate with respect to equality and anti-discrimination, they are trying to respond to the public mood by addressing ‘hate speech’.

This is a good thing.

But we also have to ask whether we need new legislation on this – a small plethora of provisions still exist in our penal code to cover what we are concerned about, covering both public utterances as well as media coverage of such utterances.

Where there is clearly a gap is in respect of the new platforms on which hate speech is now primarily generated – on blogs, email, Internet discussion groups, list serves, as well as through our mobiles.

This is a whole new terrain and one on which criminalisation is near impossible.
In the meantime, however, we can signal – as happened through these first criminal charges – that we know speech has consequences.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article first appeared in The East African.
* L. Muthoni Wanyeki is executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.