As hate speech is a term that comes from emotion, there is a wide spectrum in defining it, not a specific one. BHRN, therefore, standardized the definition of hate speech for this report as follows. Hate speech in this report means aggressiveness and hatred against protected characteristics of a person or a group, blaming, discriminative expression, writing, gesture, or art expression of excoriation, dehumanization.
It means attacking someone’s faith, language, gender, sexual orientation, origin, ethnicity, skin colour, race, belief, citizenship and physical appearance. The monitored hate speeches were categorised as (1) Criminalising Hate Speech, (2) Abusive Hate Speech, (3) Dehumanizing Hate Speech, (4) Violence Inciting Hate Speech, (5) Threatening Hate Speech, and (6) Hate Speech that supports prejudicial actions inspired by hate speech.
BHRN has daily documented hate speech terms and usages found in the contents –based on the current political crisis – disseminated by the military.
This report was written after monitoring both online and printed media which were used by Junta and its supporters to spread their hate speeches. BHRN has monitored 9 Facebook groups, 36 Facebook Accounts, 19 Tik Tok Accounts, 25 Telegram Channels and 4 Printed Media during May 2024.