PeeCeeJay

 

Ethnicity, hate speech and nation-building

By

Jideofor Adibe

pcjadibe@yahoo.com

Am I alone in noticing how Nigerians seem to enjoy profiling and pouring invectives on one another whenever they congregate in their in-group to discuss the Nigerian condition? And if you think this is only a past-time of the uneducated and those who believe the world revolves around their ethnic enclave, you may be disappointed. Just read the ‘comments’ that follow most articles online – whether in newspapers, blogs or on the numerous online news-and features aggregator sites on the country, and you will marvel at the capacity of educated Nigerians, including Diaspora-based ones who are presumably living in ‘civilized’ countries, to write from their base animal instincts. Hate speech is so pervasive in Nigeria that it is doubtful if there are many Nigerians that are completely free from the vice.  The irony is that people who usually complain of being insulted by other ethnic groups often use even more hateful words in describing the groups they feel have insulted them. Net effect: the widening of the social distance among the different ethnicities that make up the country and an exacerbation of the crisis in the country’s nation-building.

Several observations could be made about the interplay between ethnicity, hate speech and the crisis in the country’s nation-building project:

One, hate speech employs discriminatory epithets to insult and stigmatize others on the basis of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or other forms of group membership.  It is any speech, gesture, conduct, writing or display which could incite people to violence or prejudicial action. There are individuals and groups in this country who openly relish the freedom to rain insults and profile others by appropriating to themselves the role of ethnic and religious champions. The problem is that hate speech is often the gateway to discrimination, harassment and violence as well as a precursor to serious harmful criminal acts. It is doubtful if there will be hate-motivated violent attacks on any group without hate speech and the hatred it purveys.

Two, there is nothing wrong in people celebrating pride in their ethnic and other cultural identities. It is not always a manifestation of ethnicity when someone proclaims, ‘I am a proud Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba or Efik’. Most ethnic groups across the world feel that their way of life - their foods, dress, habits, beliefs, values, and so forth, are superior to those of other groups. There is nothing wrong with this.

The boundary between this love for one’s ethnic identity (ethnocentrism) and ethnicity (which is conflictual in character) could however be thin. When our love for our ethnic identity results in seeing other groups as competitors or the reasons why we are not getting what we believe we deserve to get, then there is often recourse to hate speech to vent our frustrations on the out-group. At that point, the love for one’s ethnic identity has become conflictual in form and thus crossed the boundary to ethnicity. It is important to underline that although ethnicity is rooted in the struggle for the scarce societal values – political positions, jobs, contracts, scholarships etc – by the various ethnic factions of the Nigerian elite, it has overtime acquired an objective character such that it now exists independent of the original causative factors. Not surprisingly therefore we have a group of ‘ethnic watchers’ whose only vocation appears to be working the arithmetic of which ethnic group gets what, when and how in the proverbial sharing of the ‘national cake’.

Three, there is an urgent need to do something about hate speech because of its tendency to exacerbate ethnicity and the crisis in our nation building. For instance though the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) - a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 16, 1966 and which came into force from March 23, 1976 -  encourages countries to prohibit any advocacy of national, racial, ethnic or religious hatred, in practice hate speech is  difficult to prohibit. In the US for instance, hate speech is protected as a civil right (aside from usual exceptions to free speech such as defamation, incitement to riot, and fighting words). In fact laws prohibiting hate speech are unconstitutional in the United States as most often fail legal challenges based on the First Amendment of the Country’s Constitution which prohibited the restriction of free speech. In the US law courts, even ‘fighting words’ - which are categorically excluded from the protection of the First Amendment - are not that easy to separate from hate speech.

 An insight into how the American jurisprudence protects hate speech is in the   way the law treats the Ku Klux Klan – one of the worst purveyors of racial hatred in that country. In a landmark case, Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the arrest of an Ohio Klansman named Clarence Brandenburg on criminal syndicalism charges, based on a KKK speech that recommended overthrowing the government, was overturned in a ruling that has protected rascals of all political persuasions ever since. In a unanimous judgment, Justice William Brennan argued that "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action." In another important case, Snyder v. Phelps (2011), Westboro Baptist Church, which has achieved some notoriety for celebrating the 9/11 attacks and picketing military funerals, was sued by the family of Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder who was killed in Iraq in 2006 for intentional infliction of emotional distress after it picketed during the Corporal’s funeral. In an 8-1 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Westboro's right to picket.

There are at least four key arguments for justifying free speech in American jurisprudence– the importance of discovering the truth by allowing ideas to compete freely in the marketplace of ideas, free speech is regarded as an aspect of self-fulfillment, it is also seen as indispensable for a citizen to participate in a democracy and there is the deep suspicion of government and a belief that only free speech can restrain the government from trampling on the rights of the citizens.

Away from American free speech jurisprudence, hate speech is prohibited in several jurisdictions such as Canada where advocating genocide or inciting hatred against any 'identifiable group' is an indictable offence under the country’s Criminal Code with maximum prison terms of two to fourteen years. In the United Kingdom, several statutes criminalize hate speech against several categories of persons. In South Africa, hate speech (along with incitement to violence and propaganda for war) is specifically excluded from protection of free speech in the Constitution. The Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, 2000 in fact contains the following clause: “[N]o person may publish, propagate, advocate or communicate words based on one or more of the prohibited grounds, against any person, that could reasonably be construed to demonstrate a clear intention to― (a) be hurtful;(b) be harmful or (c) to incite harm and (d) promote or propagate hatred”.

Four, how should the government tackle the menace of hate speech- should it follow the American model and believe that  the ability to live with speeches that shock or awe should be a small price to pay for safeguarding free speech and that Nigerians should see it as part of the process of nurturing the culture of tolerance? Or should it follow the European and South African model that explicitly prohibit hate speech? My personal opinion is that the government should go for a cross between the two. For instance using the law to prohibit free speech could sometimes be counterproductive. A good example of this is what happened in the Australian state of Victoria where a law banning incitement to religious hatred has led to Christians and Muslims accusing each other of inciting hatred and bringing legal actions against each other that only served to further inflame community relations.

I will recommend the following measures: There is an urgent need to develop, in conjunction with critical organs of the society such as media owners and practitioners, taxonomy of what constitutes hate speech. Media houses through their unions should incorporate these as part of good journalism practice and impose sanctions on erring members who publish or broadcast hate speech-laden materials. The National Orientation Agency, in concert with civil society groups and community leaders, should also embark on a campaign against the use of hate speech. In the same vein, Internet Service providers should be encouraged to bring down blogs and websites they host which publish, promote or give unfettered space for the expression of free speech. Above all  it should be impressed upon the political leadership at all levels that a deep distrust of the government is at the heart of the sort of free speech jurisprudence you have in the United States and that Nigerians have the same level of distrust of their governments.