On Tuesday 26 November 2024, the activities of the conference on “Confronting Hate Speech and Rebuilding Trust in Iraqi Society,” organised by the Iraqi Culture, Tourism and Antiquities Ministry’s Conference Palace Department, began at the Cordoba Hall of the Mansour Melia Hotel in the capital Baghdad.
The conference, which was held under the patronage of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani and under the supervision of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities Minister Dr. Ahmed Fakkak Al-Badrani, began with a welcoming speech delivered by the Conference Palace Department’s Director General Dr. Montaser Sabah Al-Hasnawi, in which he explained the ministry and Conference Palace Department’s vision, as well as their role in confronting the spread of the hate speech phenomenon in the country.
The conference’s first session, moderated by media figure Thaer Al-Hasnawi, included a number of topics, most notably, “Protecting Iraqi Components from Hate Speech” by the Director General of Syriac Culture and Arts in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, Kaldo Ramzi Oghanna, in which he addressed the fears and concerns of ethnic components regarding the growth of hate speech in Iraq, pointing out the importance of diagnosing the roots of hate speech in order to find solutions to combat this.
Oghanna added that, “the effort requires integrated humanitarian work, not only by one institution or individual effort, but there must be an integrated government project in which civil society, the media and the government participate,” stressing the need for new legislation that clearly identifies responsibility for those involved in and promoting hate speech, in addition to the presence of deterrent penalties within these legislations that punish the violator and promoter of this speech.
Oghanna stressed the importance of returning to history to reduce hate speech crimes, pointing out that all criminal acts, genocide and ethnic cleansing throughout history began with inflammatory speech that incites hatred and fuels it among components.
At the end of his participation, Oghanna reviewed the impact of hate speech on ethnic components throughout history, explaining that the Simmele massacre, which was committed in the 1930s and led to the killing of more than five thousand people, was a heinous act that began with an official speech calling for incitement against a specific component, as well as the events of ISIS in 2014, which had an ideological speech.
On the sidelines of the conference, an exhibition of the products of Dar Al-Mamoun for Translation was held at the Culture, Tourism and Antiquities Ministry.
A group of official, political, religious and academic figures from various spectrums and components of Iraqi society participated in the conference sessions.
It is worth noting that the conference witnessed the attendance of the Culture Ministry’s Undersecretary Qasim Al-Sudani, representing the Iraqi Culture, Tourism and Antiquities Minister, parliamentarian and Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Culture, Tourism, Antiquities and Media Farouk Hanna Atto, Secretary-General of the Iraqi Council of Representatives Safwan Bashir, in addition to a number of general managers in the Culture Ministry and other ministries, as well as the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers.
