Hilde Johnson: An Inciting Factor to Genocide in South Sudan
4 min readBy Simon Yel Yel, Kuala lumpur-Malaysia
Demonstrating the speech must meets the legal threshold to avoid direct or indirect element of incitement, a mode of speech may be perceived as direct in one culture, but not in another.
Consider, for example, the trial judgment in the case of prosecution of Simon Bikindi, handed down by the ICTR on December 2, 2008. Simon Bikindi was a famous composer and singer from Rwanda who distinguished himself in the run-up to the 1994 genocide by using his music and fame to drum up support for the Hutu-led regime, and by fostering ethnic hatred throughout the carnage.
He was also held accused of incitement for composing and performing songs like Nanga Abahutu (“I Hate These Hutu,” an anti-Tutsi song) according to Rwanda book titled Testimony of survivals. According to prosecution witnesses who appeared before the ICTR, Bikindi’s song was not only an invitation to hate Tutsi, but given the context of the ongoing civil war, to be ready to kill them as well.
Generally speaking, “incitement” means encouraging or persuading another to commit an offense by way of communication, for example by employing broadcasts publications, drawings, images, or speeches. It is “public” under international law if it is communicated to a number of individuals in a public place or to members of a population at large by such means as the mass media.
Among other things, its “public” nature distinguishes it from an act of private incitement which could be punishable under the Genocide Convention as “complicity in genocide”.
Incitement to genocide must also be proven to be “direct,” meaning that both the speaker and the listener understand the speech to be a call to action. Prosecutors have found it challenging to prove what “direct” may mean in different cultures, as well as its meaning to a given speaker. Moreover, public incitement to genocide can be prosecuted even if genocide is never perpetrated.
Lawyers therefore classify the infraction an “inchoate crime”: a proof of result is not necessary for the crime to have been committed, only that it had the potential to spur genocidal violence.
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It is intent of the speaker that matters, not the effectiveness of the speech in causing criminal action. This distinction helps to put Hilde Johnson unwanted in South Sudan and a genocidal propagator.
In the recent failed coup attempt in our country, the UN representative in South Sudan made several statements over media outlets which resulted into conflict in regions dominated by Nuer ethnic group against their countrymen Dinka.
The UN representative statements were directly placing Dinka as a tool used by government to killed fellow Nuer in Juba after failed coup attempt, hence the UN maintain the conflict as political crisis and not a failed coup.
The crime of incitement remains firmly in place on the international legal stage. In 1998, an incitement provision was included in Article 25(3)(e) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in conjunction with Article 6-Genocide which applies here in the case of South Sudan against Hilde Johnson.
As I can’t rule out the atrocities that have occurred in Juba against innocent civilian, the timing and complexity of coup itself might have some negative impact on civilian as Juba hosts more than a million populations with over 80% armed and residing among civil population. To identify a civilian from the soldier in such a situation is a nightmare if not completely impossible.
But the revenge attack on civilian in Akobo, Bor, Nasir, Bantiu and many other areas inhabited by fellow Nuer after Hilde Johnson statements defines clearly the dark future of our country and clear incitement with intention to kill. Cultivating hatred and disunity among communities who believed in muscles and false prophets is a threat to stability and even for politician’s political career.
Our government must register a firm stand against her move and ask the UN body to withdraw her from South Sudan as she become more dangerous for social cohesion in the country.
The colonial elements are planning underneath to reshape the future structure of South Sudan to look the way they like in the next fifty years by imposing divisive policies taking the advantage of weak social fabrics in our country.
I also appeal to my fellow countrymen and women to rise beyond tribal lines and seek justice rather than killing one another.
Long live South Sudn
Long live the great people of South Sudan.
simon Yel Yel is an engineering student in Kuala Lumpur-Malaysia . He is reachable at simonyel55@yahoo.com.
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