Three Facebook page administrators are being sought by the government for engaging in hate speech. Administrators of Nyanza si Kenya, Luo Nation and RIP Citizen TV are being accused of spreading ethnic animosity. Mary Ombara, the Director of Public Communication says, “The pages perpetuate ethnic economic sabotage, messages of ethnic stereotypes and ethnic murder. As of now the committee (National Steering Committee on Media Monitoring) reassures the country that we are doing everything possible to track down the origins of the hate speech bloggers.”
The Ministry of Information and Communication will be proposing the Independent Communications Commission of Kenya Bill in two weeks, a bill that is expected to help police the Internet. Three other bills that will be proposed to the parliament are the Revised Media Bill (2012), The Freedom of Information Bill and the Revised Kenya Information and Communications Bill (2012).
“Hate speech on social media has gone slightly down in the last one week in terms of the number of hate postings. It is however not extinguished and we are therefore very happy about the Independent Communications Commission of Kenya Bill which will help us, if it actually becomes an Act, to govern better the Internet and broadband areas in general so we are very happy about this,” says Ombara.
Photo from Natural News
