UNITED NATIONS, May 02 (APP):The United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng, has called on world leaders to end “political opportunism” and void cultivating a culture that tolerates hate speech and violent extremism.
Speaking at the end of the second Global Summit on Religion, Peace and Security in Geneva, Dieng noted that in the wake of dozens killed inside Sri Lanka churches and in mosques in New Zealand, a synagogue attack in California, and killings inside a church in Burkina Faso, the threat of another genocide somewhere, was only growing larger.
“We are speaking about peace, we are speaking about justice, we are speaking about strong institutions”, the Special Adviser said, adding with urgency, that “it’s easy to accuse the extreme right-wing leaders, but what are the others doing?”
More moderate politicians needed to be “speaking out” too, and getting “better mobilized, but sometimes you also see the political opportunism, even in those camps”, he said.
This needed to be addressed fast he said, especially in Europe, where the same signs of growing, militant nationalism, that allowed the rise of violent regimes based on racist ideology in the 1930s, can be seen today.
“We need to bring an end to this cynical, politicians’ discourse” Dieng said. “Big massacres start always with small actions and language”, he warned, noting that the Holocaust against the Jews perpetrated by the Nazis, was preceded by hate speech, and hate crimes, that robbed Jews of their basic humanity.
“We witnessed the same in Rwanda” he said, in 1994, against the Tutsis and others, where they became known as “snakes”. “It started with those words, and what we are seeing today, is pretty close”.
