The government has identified several blogs, online forums and Facebook pages as the most responsible for spreading hate messages in Kenya. Information and communication permanent secretary also singled out Makau Mutua who writes a column for the Sunday Nation, and promised to take action for his irresponsible writing that allegedly divide the country.
He further said that the government has the capacity to identify individuals spreading hate speech online. “I saw a very bad tweet yesterday. There is a process called triangulation and it is actually very easy to know who is doing it. Most people probably are doing thinking it is not easy knowing who they are.”
“We however have the capacity to do triangulation and very easily get to the person and that is what we are going to do with the names that we have,” he stated.
Bitange noted that hate speech is mostly being spread on blogs, and that almost all of them are culprits. “If we begin to prosecute for example in the blogs, we would actually finish all the bloggers that we have out there and even you yourselves maybe said something in your blogs.” he said.
The government has in the meantime established a team to monitor hate speech on social media. The team will be looking for tribal hatred that can possibly lead to violence. Already, several sites have been identified as contributing to this vice. Among them are three popular Facebook pages.
Two vernacular radio stations are also under investigation and action will be taken soon.
Among the websites is one blog, The Kenyan Daily Post, and two online forums: Mashada.com and Kenyanlist.com.
The Facebook pages include:
Gor Mahia is Not A Club, It’s a Lifestyle but do we say(Now deleted)
STOP Uhuru Kenyatta NOW
1000000 Likes To Stop Raila and Kalonzo From Winning 2013 Election
The admins and bloggers responsible for the above sites / Facebook pages will be taken to court in the next 2 weeks.
© nairobiwire.com
