Alarm raised on religious hate messages

PHOTO | AFP A State agency on media monitoring on Wednesday raised concern over the return of hate speech in social media.

What you need to know:

  • Hate speech along religious lines had increased since the start of police operations to flush out terrorists started, said National Steering Committee on Media Monitoring chairperson Mary Ombara.
  • The war against terrorism, she said, did not target any particular community, noting that the government security operations had been stretched beyond Nairobi.

A State agency on media monitoring on Wednesday raised concern over the return of hate speech in social media.

Hate speech along religious lines had increased since the start of police operations to flush out terrorists started, said National Steering Committee on Media Monitoring chairperson Mary Ombara.

Ms Ombara warned that the hate messages were a threat to national cohesion and security.

“Since the start of the operation we have seen postings on Facebook and Twitter spew hate, intolerance and mockery, contravening fairness and objectivity. Bloggers must adhere to basic principle of decency,” she said.

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Ms Ombara, who is also the Director of Public Communication in the Ministry of Information, admitted that they were unable to deal with such people as there was no law to deal with the issue.

“We may wish to prosecute those on Twitter and Facebook but we cannot do so until the case at the High Court is completed,” said Ms Ombara.

She noted that hate speech had declined from 76 per cent in 2012 to 23 per cent late last year but had now gone up to 43 per cent this month.

Her committee was also concerned about the media slant on the coverage of terrorism.

Ms Ombara said that leaders and professionals from specific communities were deliberately using the media and other public platforms to perpetrate messages of an “artificial religious conflict”.
Such messages portray government bias and excesses in security operations.

“These communities tend to appeal to public emotion through unsubstantiated media statements such as ‘We are treated as fourth class citizens’, ‘security operations target us’ or ‘we are restricted in concentration camps.’”

Ms Ombara said the committee had written to two lawyers and a politician from the said communities on their utterances.

"The committee believes that the measures taken for Kenya’s security operations are commensurate with the seriousness of the threat of terrorism,” she said.

The war against terrorism, she said, did not target any particular community, noting that the government security operations had been stretched beyond Nairobi.

“The government urges for stringent measures by all institutions and the public to help safeguard security during Easter,” she added.