By Ndefru Melanie in Bamenda
African Fact checking Fellows from Bamenda who are members of Cohort 7 trained by Defyhate now produced a 27minutes documentary “Down the line” to show how hate speech is manifested online, affecting persons or different communities offline and also proposing different ways to fight this vice, Hate speech.
The premiering held on June 18, 2023 in Bamenda, on the International day of Countering Hate speech, Pechuqui Laurata who is the producer together with her team; Tantan Patience and Mali Martha-Noel thought it wise to submit a project proposal on mitigating hate speech to defy hate now ahead of PeaceJam2023. A project that yielded fruits with input from hate speech Survivors and a technical team who put together the fine pieces, extracts together.
The production team believes that though there is a positive feedback from those who’ve watched the documentary on Peace Jam day 2023, there is still more that needs to be done. According to them, they believe that social media users may not know or determine when they are inciting hate, not living out those who are offline who may be inviting hate knowing or unknowingly.
“When we applied for this project, our intension was to sensitize youths on the impact of hate speech on social media which transcends online. From our research we discovered that youths are the ones mostly connected to social media, if we want to combat hate speech on social media our target population will be the youths because they are the one sharing information.”
” The documentary is titled- Down the line- because we are looking at the impact of hatespeech now and project what will happen down the line if youths do not come together to combat hate speech. From the documentary, one of our survivors said if this is not addressed, there might be a genocide one day. Like that in Rwanda where people were called cockroaches.”
According to Laurata, there is so much writing on social media already educating the online audience on what hatespeech is all about, how to combat these and probably the laws put in place to punish perpetrators. Yet she things reporting these perpetrators can be done differently, revealing names. To her, this is the only way to put an end to Hate speech.
“The message hasn’t gone to far, it will only go far if we start holding each other accountable, report persons. Go to law abiding forces so that the person is apprehended, report post across social media platforms so that their pages or walls are pulled down. If someone is sent to jail for Hate speech, the rest will learn and this will serve as an example, to stop Hate speech”, Pechuqui Laurata- producer of the documentary – “Down the Line”.
A hate speech survivor says it is difficult living a life always trying to prove a point, always trying to show people how different one is. He thinks people should learn to accept one another, their values. This to him, is love.
” I think that there is nothing that perpetrators of Hate speech gain in doing what they do, there is no need getting oneself or another in trouble or into feeling dehumanize by our own thoughts. The message is that perpetrators should refrain from that. Hate speech has affected me in several ways because alot of people see me as the other, this is not good. It is a very uncomfortable feeling, always trying to make someone or people understand how different you are”, Abdul Aziz, Hate speech Survivor.
Participants, most of whom are students from the University of Bamenda took off time to be present at the premiering. They watch keenly and revealed that there are details online which they will sometimes laugh over it or flip it over without knowing the impact of it of on online as well as offline community.
Frederick Tanda is a student from the university of Bamenda. He said he felt very enlightened after watching the documentary. He termed it a fine Piece…
“The issue of reporting a post on Facebook is something I never knew about, untagging myself from post that I don’t wish to be tagged to. These are a few basics I have learned and I think I will do my best to contribute my own quota to stamp out hate from my community”, Frederick Tanda, student UBA.
Emmanuela Navala another student from the university of Bamenda says she learned a couple of things on the subject countering Hate speech, she says it was an enriching session because she too is a survivor.
“I learnt how to stop preparation of hates peech, to advice and educate people to stop perpetrating Hate speech. Many key aspects of the documentary film touched me personally. Talking about tribes, my dad is from bamileke and my mum from Bali. Some people’s thoughts, negative accolades they give to Bali and Bamileke makes me uncomfortable. I learnt to how to hold back not fight back,”, Emmanuela Nevala, university of Bamenda.
Kando Morine from Defyhatenow – Community coordinator she appreciated the documentary, it’s sources. She has urged many who come across the video, to watch and make their own appraisal while understanding the message that Defyhatenow is trying to pass across
“The documentary has great content, it is now left for our communities to see, watch the video and make comments. How do we fight, counteract Hate speech in our communities. There are lot of expression we use, even jokes but we don’t know it incites hate, violence. We do this unknowingly and we don’t know if we are hurting persons arround us. Anyone that comes across the video, should share so as to create impact, get feedback”.
” I wouldn’t say enough has been done online because we are still seeing a lot of hate that is being propagated. While we fight Hate speech online, we should not forget to do so offline. There are people who are not connected or have access to the internet. So we must do everything to educate these persons offline. We count on everyone; civil society, government organizations, individual efforts to make a Hate free Cameroon”, Kando Morine from Defy hate now – Community coordinator in Bamenda.
It will be ideal for Defy hate now to begin considering the option to train content creators across the board, not only journalists or bloggers but artists too. These people have more impact on youths depending on the kind of music they produce. The content or lyrics of the music matters a lot, artists should be careful in order not to stigmatize women, children or a group of persons because of the color in music