Pursuing Russian Propagandists
Activist groups want arrest warrants issued for key figures inciting hatred against Ukrainians in the Russian media.
Also see
Russian Captain to be Tried for Kherson Torture
At least 68 victims are listed as having undergone cruel and abusive treatment while illegally detained.
Tuesday, 16 Jul ‘24
This week’s overview of key events and links to essential reading.
The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) has sent a submission to the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding hate speech in the Russian media which they argued contributed to war crimes in Ukraine.
Ilya Nuzov, FIDH’s head of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, told IWPR’s Olga Golovina that their aim was to convince the ICC to issue arrest warrants against key Russian propagandists, adding “more efforts should be undertaken to bring to justice those responsible for the dissemination of this hate speech which has been a major driver of atrocities in Ukraine”.
Olga Golovina: What are the specific objectives of the submission to the ICC?
Ilya Nuzov: In the first place, we sought to draw the ICC prosecutor’s attention to a category of international crimes that have not received a lot of attention so far: atrocity speech crimes, and specifically the crime against humanity of persecution. We believe that discriminatory hate speech has played a huge role in driving Russia’s aggression and other international crimes committed in Ukraine.
Our most obvious short-term objective is to convince the ICC prosecutor to apply to the Trial Chamber for the issuance of arrest warrants against the individuals we identify, based on the finding that there are reasonable grounds to conclude that a crime against humanity of persecution has taken place. Even if it is difficult to execute such arrest warrants, we believe that their issuance might restrict the movement of the propagandists we target and have a symbolic impact that undermines their legitimacy and veracity. Even with no arrest warrant, we hope that with our public campaign we might pressure the propagandists to curb their harmful rhetoric and at the same time counteract the narrative that they are perpetuating.
What are examples of the statements by these individuals that have allegedly contributed to enmity and war crimes?
I was particularly disturbed by the statements made by radio and TV personality Sergey Mardan, who has been quite open about the need to undertake large-scale repressions against what he refers to as “political Ukrainians” or those Ukrainians who oppose Russia’s occupation. He suggested gulags be established in the occupied territories of Ukraine for teachers who refuse to collaborate with the occupying authorities. He equates these Ukrainians with Satanists and argues that “the most correct thing would be to burn them alive”.
He stated on one occasion that “the denazication of Ukraine means completely destroying the Ukrainian state to its foundation”.
In addition to branding Ukrainians as Satanists, he repeatedly questions their mental faculties and suggests that for this reason it is best to destroy Ukraine entirely. Perhaps his most revealing statement is a one liner that encapsulates his ideology which denies the existence of Ukrainians as a separate people; he remarked once that, “A Ukrainian is a sick Russian.”
Margarita Simonyan has also called to denazify Ukraine, threatening to “wipe out the Nazi nonsense from those who could be cleansed of it, destroy those who can’t and with God’s help, send those who remain unscathed behind bars…”
In one episode on her show QED she calls for Ukrainians to “finally be finished, eradicated, like a blister... like a boil, squeezed out because if something remains in the boil, it will rot later, gangrene can start to cleanse their minds”.
Similarly, [TV presenter] Vladimir Solovyov regards Ukrainians as deeply sick and that Russia must cure “the severely ill Ukrainian people”.
He is known for having fiery exchanges with the guests of his programme in which he calls for violence against Ukrainian civilians who oppose Russia’s domination. When asked by his guest how many civilians will be involved, he responded “As many as it takes to defeat the Nazi scoundrel, that’s how many we’ll put down.” This implies that there is no limit to how many civilians will be destroyed in Russia’s “denazification” campaign.
On another occasion, he asks, “Explain to me, why does Kyiv still exist at all? Why does this Nazi city still exist?” - implying that Ukraine’s largest city should be completely destroyed.
What specific crimes against humanity are associated with these Russian propagandists?
We allege that the propagandists we identified are committing the crime against humanity of persecution under Article 7 (1) (h) of the Rome statute of the ICC. Persecution is the “severe deprivation of fundamental rights” of individuals based on their identity, such as belonging to a racial, social, national or political group. Previous jurisprudence, like the Streicher case at Nuremberg and the Media cases at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, have established that discriminatory hate speech in the context of widespread or systematic attacks against civilians amounts to a deprivation of the rights to security and human dignity.
In the Communication, we show that media personalities and politicians have spread the most vile hate speech targeting Ukrainians who regard themselves as part of the Ukrainian nation, distinct and separate from Russia. They have used different linguistic techniques to create an image of Ukrainians as enemies and aggressors, including dehumanising language, direct calls to violence and false narratives. During the period that we focus on, the two years following the full-scale invasion, they have made these statements knowing full well that Russia’s armed forces have been committing violent acts targeting Ukrainian civilians. These include arbitrary arrests of civilians, torture, murder, deportations from occupied territories, rape and other forms of sexual violence, and attacks against critical energy infrastructure. Given this context, and the gravity and repetitiveness of the aggressive rhetoric, we believe that a crime of persecution has taken place. First deputy to the chief of staff of the Presidential Administration Alexei Gromov is responsible for this conduct as a superior because he has either ordered the dissemination of the hateful speech or failed to prevent it.
It should be noted that in addition to crimes against humanity of persecution there is also a possibility of qualifying these and other statements as incitement to genocide.
How did you navigate the process of analysing over 2,000 video clips and 316 statements of alleged hate speech?
We adopted a two-track approach to analysing the data: manual review and targeted text searches. Forming some key partnerships has helped us to analyse vast amounts of data which would not have been possible without a technological solution. We entered into an agreement with the Ukraine War Archive, which hosts a platform that is able to upload and automatically transcribe video content into text, and another agreement with the Essex University’s Digital Verification Unit to help us conduct searches. To that end, we created a list of key words that we knew Russian propagandists have used to dehumanise or denigrate Ukrainians, such as khokhol, Nazi, Banderite, scum, filth, satanist, etc. We engaged a professional Russian-speaking linguist and the Essex University team then watched materials after having narrowed down the pool of video segments requiring closer scrutiny with key words. The final list of 316 statements have been selected based on their gravity and included in the confidential annexes we submitted to the Court. Several dozen out of these, the most nefarious types of statements, appear in our communication.
What outcomes are expected from the ICC in response to this submission? How do you assess the chances of the ICC issuing arrest warrants for these individuals?
It is very difficult to predict what the prosecutor’s office will do. Of course, we are hoping that he will deem our evidence as providing reasonable grounds to apply to the judges for arrest warrants. If that’s the case, there is a good chance that the Trial Chamber will issue them. But there is a long road before that and both legal and practical impediments. From the legal standpoint, the prosecutors might deem that the crime against humanity of persecution based on hate speech is not well established in international law. We make a very good argument that it is however, based on two cases in Nuremberg, the Nahimana and other cases at the ICTR and the Sesel judgment of the ICTY. All of these have established liability under international law for this crime, in circumstances that are very reminiscent of the current context. We also argue that so many states have criminalised hate speech under their domestic law that it should be criminalised on the international level. What’s interesting is that in Russia hate speech is also prohibited, and in 2004 Russian courts convicted a regional newspaper owner of antisemitic hate speech that was in content very similar to the rhetoric employed by today’s propagandist: the denial of nationhood and conspiracy theories accusing the target group of all evils of the world.
