Inciting ethnic hatred and violence is criminal - Dr. Anane Gyinde

Corporate Governance Expert and Lecturer at GIMPA, Dr Kwaku Anane Gyinde has cautioned communicators against the use of the media as a tool to propagate ethnic hatred.

According to him, it is dangerous for the country when commentators make deliberate pronouncements in the media geared towards ethnocentric politics.

Dr Gyinde added that inciting ethnic hatred or violence is a criminal offence according to Ghana’s Constitution.

“Some of these statements that these people have been making, a lot of them are not even aware that it is criminal”, he said.

“…if you go to the realms of international law, now there is a legal principle that anybody who incites ethnic hatred can be charged and tried by the intentional criminal court”, he added.

Speaking on the GTV Breakfast Show, Dr Gyinde made reference to the Holocaust between 1941 and 1945 and the Rwanda genocide of 1994 where ethnocentric politics wreaked havoc on nations.

“If we go back to history, it is this same ethnocentric politics that was employed by Joseph Goebbel, the Propaganda Secretary of Adolf Hitler. He started alleging that the Jews control about 80% of bakeries in Germany so what if one day they decide to poison us and that was the beginning? You go to Rwanda, before their crisis some radio station intentionally incited the Tutsis against the Hutus. I visited Rwanda in 2015 and was sent to the genocide museum. If you get there, you will know how wicked human beings can be towards their fellow human beings”, he narrated.

He called on media practitioners, social commentators, and panellists among others to be mindful of their utterances when given a platform to address issues of national interest.

“At the end of the day, we can disagree. That’s the essence of democracy. We can disagree and agree but our disagreement should not descend into chaos or anarchy”, he advised.