Freedom of Speech vs. Hate Speech
The Jurisdiction of ‘Direct and Public Incitement to Commit Genocide’

Tonja Salomon

In January 1994 General Dallaire who was leading the UNAMIR, the UN mission for Rwanda, sent a fax to New York in which he informed the UN Headquarter that a massive killing was being prepared in the tiny country in East Africa . The department of peacekeeping operations ignored the information. The UN’s refusal to interfere allowed the perpetrators to establish huge weapon stores which subsequently enabled the realisation of the genocide. Rwandan party, media and military people meanwhile created a dense and deadly atmosphere that provided the perfect background for their plan to kill the Tutsi.

All perpetrators of genocide know that what is necessary is to prepare people by means of propaganda to kill their neighbours, to torture and rape. That task is not easy to accomplish. It requires the creation of a certain state of mind that enables the killers to dehumanize their victims. The Rwandan genocidaires started their psychological and physical preparation months, if not years before the actual massacres began, enabled, and no doubt encouraged, by the silence of – among others – the UN, the United States and France.

The Rwandan genocide began on the 6 April 1994 after president Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down in Kigali, by actors unknown until today. What followed was the murder of at least 800.000 human beings. The first stage of genocide has always been the preparation and mobilization of the masses by means of propaganda. In Germany, the Nazis had started a long propaganda campaign against Jews long before they were deported and murdered. They created a ‘Feindbild’ of Jews by using established anti-semitic stereotypes. The Germans ultimately pictured Jews as ‘Ungeziefer’ (vermin). The Rwandan perpetrators used similar methods. They asserted that the Tutsi dominated Rwandan business, that they had a plan to regain political power in Rwanda and to push the Hutu out of their well-deserved place in society; besides, Tutsi women were accused of being seducers.

The six men sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide knew these ingredients well. They dehumanized Tutsis and labelled them as ‘bloodthirsty’, ‘evil’, ‘arrogant’ and ‘lusting for power’. They created fear of the Tutsi as an ethnic group. They argued that what was necessary was ‘self defence’ of the Hutu. Ultimately, ‘self defence’ came to mean to kill Tutsi, whether they were members of the Tutsi rebel army or not. Akayesu, Kambanda, Ruggiu, Kajelijeli, Barayagwiza, Nahimana and Ngeze, urged people one way or another ‘to lose their pity’ for the ‘milk drinking small nose’ Tutsi.1

Speeches and writings by influential members of society such as government officials, party members, intellectuals and journalists are powerful instruments for spreading racism and hate. Genocidaires publish infamous newspapers and give horrifying speeches, especially on radio. In Rwanda, where at least one third of the population is illiterate, radio has a very prominent function in this respect.

What is freedom of speech worth if a genocide is prepared and committed in its name? The subject of my paper is the fine line between freedom of speech and protection against atrocities. It deals with crimes against humanity induced in part by words. If words have the potential to enable and indeed to induce mass murder then at what point do words start to be murder instruments?

The answers to this question differ in the various legal cultures, reflecting the individual histories of states. In Germany, for example, denial of the Holocaust is with good reason liable to prosecution, while it is – comprehensibly as well – not in most other countries. As regards incitement to genocide in international criminal law, the judgments of the ICTR answer that question by taking into account the standard of incitement jurisprudence developed worldwide. In this text, I will address the legal findings of the Arusha based tribunal, focusing on the criteria used by the judges in order to define the elements of the crime.
Direct and public incitement to commit genocide is expressly defined as a specific crime, punishable as such, pursuant to Article 2 (3)(c) of the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
The first definition of the elements of this crime was established by Trial Chamber I in the judgment against Jean Paul Akayesu. This judgment was historic the day it was delivered, on 2 September 1998. It was the first judgment in international criminal law that convicted a defendant with the crime of genocide and direct and public incitement to commit genocide. Among its most important legal findings is the decision that the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide is punishable even if the genocide in question is never actually committed or even attempted. 2 By doing so, the judges acknowledged that words alone can have the effect of bullets. The inciters of Rwanda’s genocide were found guilty for their words and deeds as well as for their words as deeds.3
The Trial Chamber found that Akayesu incited genocide by leading and addressing a public gathering in Taba on 19 April 1994, during which he urged the population to unite in order to eliminate what he referred to as the ‘sole enemy’: the accomplices of the ‘Inkotanyi’- a derogatory reference to Tutsis. That was understood to be a call to kill the Tutsis in general.4
The judges started their legal finding recalling ‘the most famous conviction for incitement to commit crimes of international dimension’. The International Military Tribunal in Nuremburg sentenced Julius Streicher for the virulently anti-Semitic articles that he had published in his weekly newspaper Der Stürmer. The Nuremberg Tribunal found that: ‘Streicher’s incitement to murder and extermination, at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions, clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with War Crimes, as defined by the Charter, and constitutes a Crime against Humanity’.5 The ICTR Chamber examined the Genocide Convention and stated that the delegates “agreed to expressly spell out direct and public incitement to commit genocide as a specific crime, in particular, because of its critical role in the planning of a genocide, with the delegate from the USSR stating in this regard that, ‘it was impossible that hundreds of thousands of people should commit so many crimes unless they had been incited to do so and unless the crimes had been premeditated and carefully organized.’6 However, it is useful to call attention to the fact that the drafters of the Genocide Convention could not agree to criminalize hate speech. A Russian proposal intending to include all forms of propaganda as punishable hate speech was dismissed.7 With regard to the ‘direct’ element of the crime the rejection of including hate speech still causes legal problems, as perpetrators may use this argument.
In order to define the elements of the crime of direct and public incitement, the judges focused on specific incitement definitions both under Common and Civil law. While under Common law systems incitement tends to be viewed as a particular form of punishable criminal participation, in Civil law systems it is most often treated as a form of complicity. Under some Civil laws countries, provocation, which is similar to incitement, is a specific form of participation in an offence.8 The Chamber recalled that incitement is defined in Common law systems as encouraging or persuading another to commit an offence. One line of authority in Common law would also view threats or other forms of pressure as a form of incitement. Civil law systems punish direct and public incitement assuming the form of provocation, which is defined as an act intended to directly provoke another to commit a crime or a misdemeanour through speeches, shouting or threats, or any other means of audiovisual communication. Such a provocation, as defined under Civil law, is made up of the same elements as direct and public incitement to commit genocide as those covered by Article 2 of the Statute, that is to say it is both direct and public.
The Chamber stated that the public element of incitement to commit genocide “may be better appreciated in light of two factors: the place where the incitement occurred and whether or not assistance was selective or limited.”9 A line of authority commonly followed in Civil law systems regard words as being public when they are spoken aloud in a place that is public by definition. According to the International Law Commission, public incitement is characterized by a call for criminal action to a number of individuals in a public place or to members of the general public at large by such means as the mass media, for example, radio or television.
The crucial element of the crime is the ‘direct’ element of incitement. It was and still is the main point of discussion, as mentioned above. ‘Direct’ literally means ‘explicit’. Ambiguous phrases and expressions that are open to various interpretations are rarely direct in the above sense, as they tend to merely imply their meaning. Under a strictly dogmatic approach, it is difficult to subsume such phrases under direct incitement.10 The Chamber’s approach took into account that the law has to deal with a wide variety of issues, many of them of great complexity. It is inevitable that this results in a development of a vocabulary of technical terms, what many would call legal jargon. In other words: Judges must give effect to the grammatical and ordinary or, where appropriate, the technical meaning of words in the general context of a statute. That is exactly what Trial Chamber I did. It established a workable definition of direct incitement.
The Chamber stated that incitement is direct where it assumes a direct form and specifically provoke another to engage in a criminal act. More than mere vague or indirect suggestion goes to constitute direct incitement. The judges argued, ‘However, the Chamber is of the opinion that the direct element of incitement should be viewed in the light of its cultural and linguistic content. Indeed, a particular speech may be perceived as „direct“ in one country, and not so in another, depending on the audience.end of speechmarks ? The Chamber further recalled that incitement might be direct, and nonetheless implicit.11
The Chamber came to the conclusion that in order to be able to come to an exact evaluation of a speech it is necessary to ‘consider on a case-by-case basis whether, in light of the culture of Rwanda and the specific circumstances of the instant case, acts of incitement can be viewed as direct or not, by focusing mainly on the issue of whether the persons for whom the message was intended immediately grasped the implication thereof.’12
Applying the standards and definitions it developed, the Chamber found that ‘it has been established that Akayesu clearly urged the population to unite in order to eliminate what he termed the sole enemy: the accomplices of the Inkotanyi, that the population understood Akayesu’s call as one to kill the Tutsi.’ The judges were satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that, by his speeches, Akayesu had the intent to directly create a particular state of mind in his audience necessary to lead to the destruction of the Tutsi group as such.13
The next person who was convicted for the crime of incitement was Jean Kambanda. Kambanda is the first head of government to be convicted and punished for genocide and direct and public incitement to commit genocide. In his guilty plea, Jean Kambanda acknowledged that as Prime Minister of the Interim Government of Rwanda from 8 April 1994 to 17 July 1994, he was head of the 20 member Council of Ministers and exercised de jure authority and control over the members of his government. The Chamber stated that Jean Kambanda acknowledged that in his capacity as Prime Minister, he gave clear support to Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), with the knowledge that it was a radio station whose broadcasts incited killing, the commission of serious bodily or mental harm to, and persecution of Tutsi and moderate Hutu. On this occasion, speaking on this radio station, Jean Kambanda, as Prime Minister, encouraged the RTLM to continue to incite the massacres of the Tutsi civilian population, specifically stating that this radio station was ‘an indispensable weapon in the fight against the enemy’.14
Kambanda further admitted that in his particular role of making public engagements in the name of the government, he addressed public meetings, and the media, at various places in Rwanda directly and publicly inciting the population to commit acts of violence against Tutsi and moderate Hutu. He acknowledged uttering the incendiary phrase, which was subsequently repeatedly broadcast: ‘You refuse to give your blood to your country and the dogs drink it for nothing.’ Again, this phrase shows the problem raised by the inevitable ambiguity of human language. Kambanda acknowledged that the content of the phrase was meant to incite. Thus the Trial Chamber simply stated that Kambanda’s speech satisfied the Akayesu standard.
The third person to be convicted was George Ruggiu, a Belgian. He was a social worker who worked for the Belgian Social Security Administration. While in Rwanda, the accused worked as a journalist and broadcaster for RTLM radio from 6 January 1994 to 14 July 1994. In his guilty plea he assumed full responsibility for all the relevant acts alleged in the indictment. He admitted, ‘that all broadcasts were directed towards rallying the population against the ‘enemy’, the RPF and those who were considered to be allies of the RPF, regardless of their ethnic background.15 He admitted that RTLM broadcasts generally referred to those considered being RPF allies as RPF ‘accomplices’. The Trial Chamber found that the meaning of this term gradually expanded to include the civilian Tutsi population and Hutu politicians opposed to the Interim Government. Ruggiu stated that in the months following his arrival in Rwanda, he noticed changes in the Rwandan political scene. The country was slipping senselessly into further violence against a background of increasing ethnic problems and rifts. The trial Chamber argued that the widespread use of the term ‘Inyenzi’ conferred the de facto meaning of ‘persons to be killed’. Within the context of the civil war in 1994, the term ‘Inyenzi’ became synonymous with the term ‘Tutsi’. Ruggiu confirmed this interpretation. He acknowledges that the word ‘Inyenzi’, as used in a (certain) socio-political context, came to designate the Tutsis as ‘persons to be killed’. Ruggiu admitted that as part of the move to appeal for, or encourage, ‘civil defence’, he made a public broadcast (appeal) to the population on several occasions to ‘go to work’. The phrase ‘go to work’ is a literal translation of the Rwandan expression that Phocas Habimana, Manager of the RTLM, expressly instructed the accused to use during his broadcasts. With time, this expression came to clearly signify ‘go fight against members of the RPF and their accomplices.’ With the passage of time, the expression came to mean, ‘go kill the Tutsis and Hutu political opponents of the interim government.’
Again, the speeches and broadcasts given by Ruggiu did not require an intense analysis by the Trial Chamber. However, the Trial Chamber stated that the legal questions concerning an incitement conviction were ‘extensively discussed in “Prosecutor v. Akayesu’.16 Further, the Chamber noted that ‘in the instant case, the accused’s acts constitute public incitement. His messages were broadcast in a media forum and to members of the general public.’17
The fourth incitement judgment was delivered on 1 of December 2003 convicting Juvénal Kajelijeli. The Accused was a founder and leader of Interahamwe in the Mukingo commune from 1991 to  July 1994. During meetings Kajelijeli made speeches inciting his audience who were predominantly members of MRND and Hutus, to assault, rape and exterminate the Tutsi who were excluded from such meetings on account of their ethnicity.18 He instructed a crowd during a meeting to ‘kill and exterminate all those people in Rwankeri’ and ‘to start to work’. As Kajelijeli used clear and non-ambiguous phrases there was no need to exhaustively analyze his speeches. There simply is no clearer phrase to constitute direct incitement then to ask people to go and exterminate people. A phrase like this can without doubt be subsumed under the legal definition developed in the Akayesu standard.
One of the most complex trials of the ICTR was the Media trial that opened in October 2000 and ended on 22 August 2003 after 230 trial days. Trial Chamber I found Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, Ferdinand Nahimana and Hassan Ngeze guilty of genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, persecution and extermination as crimes against humanity. The judgment is more than 350 pages long of which 300 are dedicated to a detailed description of how the three Rwandan media leader acted and how they used their positions in order to help to kill the Tutsi. Appeals are pending and the Appeals judgment is not expected before next year.
In 1992, Nahimana and others founded a comité d’initiative to set up the company known as Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines. Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza was a member of the committee which organized the founding of RTLM. During this time, he also held the post of Director of Political Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while Hassan Ngeze worked as a journalist, and in 1990, founded the newspaper Kangura and held the post of Editor-in-Chief.
The media, particularly RTLM radio, were a key tool used by extremists within the political parties to mobilize and incite the population to commit the massacres. ‘Radio hate’ or ‘Radio Machete’, as the radio was called, had a large audience in Rwanda and became an effective propaganda instrument. RTLM vigorously pursued ethnic hatred and violence. In its broadcasts journalists encouraged setting up roadblocks and congratulated perpetrators of massacres of the Tutsis at these roadblocks. They continued to call upon the population, particularly the military and the Interahamwe militia, to finish off the 1959 revolution.
Kangura means ‘to wake others up’. It was a widely circulated newspaper. The most impressive description of the editor’s state of mind and intention gives a cartoon that was first published in another newspaper but picked up by Kangura’s editor Hassan Ngeze and republished in Kangura. It shows the editor with a psychotherapist who is asking him what he is sick of. And Ngeze answers: ‘Tutsi, Tutsi, Tutsi’. Ngeze described Tutsi people as ‘hypocrites, thieves and killers’. The Trial Chamber found – amongst other things – that Kangura suggested that ‘Tutsi women intentionally use their sexuality to lure Hutu men into liaisons in order to promote the ethnic dominance of the Tutsi over the Hutu.’19
The Media judgment is the first to consider the role of mass media in the preparation and execution of a genocide since the Streicher conviction by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal in 1946. The ICTR Trial Chamber developed important principles with respect to the conflict between hate speech and freedom of speech in the context of mass media. Taking the Akayesu standard as a base, and applying specific elements, it finally established a way of deciding at what point the fine line between incitement and freedom of speech is crossed. It also made clear that there is no easy recipe and that there are many factors that need to be considered. The Chamber recalled the important protections of international law of the right of freedom of expression and noted that some of the communication cited by the Prosecution were protected, for example an interview of Barayagwiza’s broadcast on RTLM, which is described as ‘a moving personal account of his experience of discrimination as a Hutu’. The judgment held that it was ‘critical to distinguish between the discussion of ethnic consciousness and the promotion of ethnic hatred’ and that some broadcasts fell squarely within the scope of protected speech.
The Chamber stressed the crucial point it was dealing with: ‘Unlike Akayesu and others found by the Tribunal to have engaged in incitement through their own speech, the accused in this case used the print and radio media systematically, not only for their own words but for the words of many others, for the collective communication of ideas and for the mobilization of the population on a grand scale’. It pointed out, and I believe this to be important, that it needs to consider the contents of broadcasts and articles as well as the responsibilities inherent in ownership and institutional control over media.

The Trial Chamber not only cited the Streicher case but also referred to the judgment of Hans Fritsche, a broadcaster during the Third Reich, who had a weekly radio programme. Unlike Streicher he was acquitted. The reason given for his acquittal was basically that he did not know about the extermination of the Jews, that he tried to avoid anti-semitism in his programme and that he had actually refused requests from Goebbels to incite antagonism and arouse hatred. The main argument remained that he had no control over the formulation of propaganda policies. Thus, he has merely been a conduit to the press of directives passed down to him.20

The Trial Chamber also recalled the UN Conventions such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Convention of the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).21 It could be said that those international treaties complemented the Genocide Convention.22 The essence of these conventions could be described as the frame for balancing freedom of speech and protection against racist discrimination. The Chamber noted that freedom of expression and freedom from discrimination are not incompatible principles of law. Hate speech is not protected speech under international law. In fact, governments have an obligation under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to prohibit any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence. Similarly, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination requires the prohibition of propaganda activities that promote and incite racial discrimination.23 The Chamber gave an almost worldwide overview over domestic law on freedom of expression and protection against discrimination. A great number of countries around the world, including Rwanda, have domestic laws that ban advocacy of discriminatory hate, in recognition of the danger it represents and the harm it causes.

The Trial Chamber cited a decision of the Human Rights Committee. In the case of Robert Faurisson v France, the Human Right Committee considered the meaning of the term incitement in Article 20 (2) of the ICCPR. Faurisson argued that his right of freedom of expression was violated because he was convicted in France for publishing articles in which he doubted the existence of gas chambers.24 The Human Right Committee came to the conclusion that the restriction on publication of these views did not violate right to freedom of expression in Article 19. In addition, it stated that it was indeed necessary to restrict this kind of speech under Article 19 (3).25

The Chamber further examined six decisions of the European Court for Human Rights. Under the European Convention on Human Rights restricting speech is justified ‘for the protection of the reputation or rights of others’. In Jersild v. Denmark26 the Court overturned the conviction of a journalist who had interviewed members of a racist youth group. The main argument for the ruling was that the introduction of the programme ‘clearly disassociated’ the journalist from the persons he interviewed. But there were two dissenting votes stating that the conviction should be upheld as ‘not enough was said in the program to condemn the racist views.’ Thus, the background of a speech is a factor that helps to define the directness of an ambiguous speech. Another potential justification for speech restriction is national security concerns. Article 10 of the European Convention protects the right to express support for, and to disseminate expression of support for, political goals that are identified with violent means used in an effort to attain them. In Zana v Turkey, the Court considered that the defendant not only made contradictory and ambiguous comments but had a certain standing in society as he was a former mayor. In the context of ongoing attacks his statements ‘had to be regarded as likely to exacerbate an already explosive situation in that region’.27 The other Turkish cases cited by the Trial Chamber all allow to conclude that a decision about speech restriction requires to consider the ‘need for the closest scrutiny’ in cases involving opposition parties. The Court stressed that criticism of the government should be given additional latitude. Furthermore the Court argued that where statements incite to violence, there is a ‘wider margin of appreciation’ for interference with freedom of expression.

The Trial Chamber also focussed on the impact as a defining factor: A book, for example, is a literary work rather than mass media, a factor limiting the potential impact on national security and public order.28 In Sürek and Özdemir v Turkey where journalists made statements supporting the PKK the Court expressed that ‘particular caution is called for when consideration is being given to the publication of the views of representatives of organisations which resort to violence against the State lest the media become a vehicle for the dissemination of hate speech and the promotion of violence.end of speechmarks ? At the same time, where such views cannot be categorised as such, contracting States cannot with reference to the protection of territorial integrity or national security or the prevention of crime or disorder restrict the right of the public to be informed of them by bringing the weight of the criminal law to bear on the media.”29 Nevertheless five judges concurred stating that ‘less attention should be given to the form of the words used and more attention to the general context in which the words were used and their likely impact.’ The key questions, as the Trial Chamber cited, are: ‘Was the language intended to inflame or incite to violence?’ and ‘Was there a real and genuine risk that it might actually do so?’

In Sürek v Turkey the Court addressed the question of shareholder responsibility. While the defendant argued that he should be exonerated from any criminal liability for the content of statements made by others and published by him, the Court found ‘he was the owner and as such had the power to shape the editorial direction of the review. For that reason, he was vicariously subject to the duties and responsibilities which the review’s editorial and journalistic staff undertake in the collection and dissemination of information to the public and which assume an even greater importance in situations of conflict and tension.’30 The Chamber used the rulings of these cases as a basis and concluded: Hate speech expressing ethnic and other forms of discrimination violates the norm of customary international law prohibiting discrimination. Within this norm of customary law, the prohibition of advocacy of discrimination and incitement to violence is increasingly important as the power of the media increases and is increasingly acknowledged.

To sum up: to decide whether a pronouncement constitutes the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide it is necessary to define the term ‘direct’. The Trial Chamber I presented in detail the factors that need to be complied to assess ambiguous Media statement as direct incitement.

These factors help to refine the sensitive criteria of crime ‘directness’. An ambiguous pronouncement may only be evaluated as direct incitement when all of these factors have been taken into consideration cumulatively. The application of these criteria allows/permits an exact evaluation of statements which are ambiguous, to find out if a statement is protected speech or discrimination. To legally define ‘direct’ (?) unclear, a court has to take into account the background of the pronouncement, the tone used by the speaker, his or her standing in society. Another important legal finding of the Trial Chamber is that the speaker’s intent allows to evaluate the pronouncement in question. If the speaker has a genocidal intent, this intent indicates that his statement is more likely to be incitement to commit genocide. On the other hand, when the pronouncement was made to inform, it does not constitute incitement. The focus the judges take in the context incitement to commit genocide is therefore on intent, content and consequence. In addition to what was ruled in the Akayesu case the Trial chamber developed these additional criteria in order to deal with the complexity of media pronouncements. The Chamber for example stated that the power of the human voice adds a quality and dimension beyond words to the message conveyed. It found that ‘the radio heightened the sense of fear, the sense of danger and the sense of urgency giving rise to the need for action by listeners. The denigration of Tutsi ethnicity was augmented by the visceral scorn coming out of the airwaves – the ridiculing laugh and the nasty sneer. These elements greatly amplified the impact of RTLM broadcasts.’31

The assessment of evidence followed those principles and was done in a scrupulous manner, thus, in some cases, coming to the finding that some broadcasts were actually intended to inform. When analyzing articles and editorials of Kangura, the Chamber differentiated between ‘information about Tutsi privilege and Hutu disadvantage (that) was conveyed in a manner that appears as though intended to raise consciousness regarding ethnic discrimination against the Hutu’ and other articles which incorporated messages of ethnic hatred.
The UN inactivity in 1994 was the organization’s most painful failure since its founding. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was established – amongst other things – to restore the lost reputation of the UN. The judgments I presented are part of that task. To sum up, the principles and standards developed by the ICTR have the potential to impact and influence both international and domestic law. The ruling that hate speech can constitute the crime of genocide as well as the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide is critical.
The Media judgment has been praised as well as criticized. The critics claim that the established definition of incitement is too broad and endangers freedom of speech but it does in fact comply with the strictest standard of protection by the First Amendment of the United States’ Constitution Therefore, most legal scholars agree that it will serve as a workable guideline. Though some points of the judgment, which I did not address in this text – such as causation or the discussion about incitement being an inchoate offence – seem rather unclear, I do not see serious risks of doctrinal abuse in the future. I agree with the evaluation of those who point out that the judgment’s reasoning allows for broad conviction in circumstances as extreme as Rwanda’s while simultaneously establishing limits for less atrocious situations. It presents an example for how courts and tribunals should undertake inquiries concerning questions of circumstances and content, tone and potential impact.
The conflict incitement jurisdiction has to deal with involves questions that cannot be answered by logic alone. The clash of freedom of speech and protection against atrocities is fundamentally about a collision of responsibility and freedom. It is of existential significance to the life/protection? of humanity on both worldwide and local/national? scales. Needs clarification One needs to keep in mind that although it is a legal discourse it is in fact everything but abstract or merely symbolic. The conflict between freedom of speech and protection against atrocities is not a paradox but a dilemma. It cannot be solved easily. One may think, ‘history teaches but it does not have pupils’. The judgments can be seen not only as a result of hard work but also of a legal community learning process. They have a clear message: that scrupulous legal argumentation and meticulous examination of law and facts have the power to protect not only freedom of speech but freedom of atrocities. Ideally, the judgments will also have an effect on the collective conscience in terms of moral and social values and help to prevent genocide in the future.