Mapping Minorities’ Vulnerability to Hate Speech
a privilege shared by all. In order to maintain the status quo in their favour, some
dominant groups have used nationality as a means of marginalising minority
groups. This plain reality goes beyond the question of compliance with
international human rights standards and instruments. In some countries
discrimination, hate speech, related stigmas and false perceptions about minority
groups are rooted so deeply in the majority society that it is difficult to shift the
public discourses to the positive. This is especially the case in the context of social
media, where it remains very difficult to moderate discussions in all languages and
keep hateful comments and content under control. The problem is that the more
hate speech remains unreported/unremoved on Facebook, the more minorities may
become targets of violence on the ground. Furthermore, online and offline hate
speech targeting ethnic/religious minorities are often conducive to systematic
discrimination, exclusion and eventual denationalisation and vice versa;
stateless minorities may easily become targets of hate speech in the absence of
any state protection and popular representation.
Therefore, considering the very harmful long-term implications of hate speech
both on the individual and societal level and based on the outcomes of Facebook’s
insufficient efforts to effectively address hate speech spread on its platform, the
adoption of strong anti-hate speech laws — designed to protect the human rights
of minorities criminalising hate speech in line with international human rights
standards, including online hate speech — throughout the Asian continent must be
part of any effective collective response to hate speech incidents, as well as the
adoption of national action plans to address hate speech in partnership with civil
society. This would require a coordinated regional approach that could tackle the
root causes and drivers of hate speech, as well as its impact on victims and
societies in a comprehensive manner. In a further attempt to prevent
discrimination, hate speech and abuses against stateless minority groups and those
who may be at high risk of statelessness, inter-group and inter-religious dialogue
must be given priority at the very local, domestic and regional levels to be able to
address the root causes and drivers of hate speech.
In these pursuits, regional actors — in the case of Myanmar, the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (‘ASEAN’) and in relation to India the Dialogue
Mechanisms between India and ASEAN — who are politically motivated by their
interest to maintain regional stability, could intervene as mediators reconciling the
parties and influencing the nationalist agendas of the concerned states. If left
unaddressed, hate speech, human rights violations and the escalation of violence
may have further implications on regional stability. Therefore, in order to address
the situations at hand, the governments of Myanmar and India should be put under
international pressure to amend their nationality legislation in such a way to
include the mentioned stateless minorities in the body of their citizens, allow
facilitated naturalisation of those who were excluded from the list of citizens and
prevent future cases of statelessness. To this end, developing effective forms of
popular and legal representation for minorities will also be an important element
in their empowerment.
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