Hate speeches on social media | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)

Pakistan Press Foundation

Hate speeches on social media

Pakistan Press Foundation

Hate speech has now become an integral part of social media and all voices raised against it are usually ignored. Now the Islamabad police have decided to launch a ‘crackdown’ on social media accounts guilty of spreading religious, linguistic and sectarian hate and propaganda through its Violent Extremism Prevention Unit (VEPU). So far, the authorities have identified at least 203 accounts and asked the cyber crime wing of the FIA to block them; 106 accounts have been blocked.

This sounds good enough, given the fact that Pakistan has already seen the dire consequences of the unbridled spread of hate speech on social media. However, authorities need to be extra careful with this approach. The law should not be used capriciously to silence voices it disagreed with and leave alone those it favoured or wanted to appease. This is why the VEPU personnel should be trained enough to distinguish between dissenting views and hate speech to avoid the misuse of the existing laws.

Those who intentionally provoke people to carry out activities that harm people must face justice. During the last few years our deeply-polarized society, access to hateful content created a detestable division in public. The undivided attention of law-enforcement agencies is a crack down on hate speeches on political or religious issues.

Though independence of writing and speech is guaranteed in our Constitution but not at the cost of division of society. It also requires for the state to accept that dissent is part of a democratic system, but hate speech and cyber crimes are not. The only way to ensure rule of law is by clamping down on hate speech and cyber crime but at the same time giving full-throated support to the rights of the people to openly express their views without fear of reprisal.

MUNAWAR SIDDIQUI

Source: Pakistan Observer


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