A/HRC/45/45 Streicher, the founder of the anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer. The Tribunal ruled that Streicher’s incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constituted persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with war crimes, as defined by the Charter, and constituted a crime against humanity. 83. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda also imposed severe penalties on two officials of Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines50 and the presenters employed by that station for direct and public incitement to commit genocide and for persecution as a crime against humanity on the grounds that hate media had played a key role in the instigation of genocide. The Tribunal found a direct link between hate media and the killing of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. 84. The impunity of ideologues and spreaders of hateful and discriminatory speech facilitates the construction of a false memory that is morally repugnant and that contributes to and encourages violence. C. Responsibility of the media and the need to adapt laws 85. National and international law must be able to respond adequately to the development of information technology. Social media that transcend borders pose unprecedented challenges, as technology companies may be based thousands of miles from the places where hate speech originates and where civilian populations suffer its violent consequences. 86. The final report of the independent international fact-finding mission on Myanmar established that incitement to hatred through social networks and other non-electronic media was correlated with violence against the Rohingya: The Mission received information suggesting that the linkage between offline and online hate speech and real world acts of discrimination and violence is more than circumstantial. Patterns are emerging of hate speech sermons and rhetoric in specific locations that have subsequently experienced violence, and so are indications of peaks of online hate speech around outbreaks of violence. Such patterns and indications need to be comprehensively examined.51 87. The Special Rapporteur believes that, even when technology companies do not intend to engage in criminal acts, they cannot be absolved of responsibility for providing tools for the transmission of messages that may cause acts of violence to be inflicted on tens or even hundreds of thousands of people. There can be no justification for allowing social media companies to escape responsibility when they are found to have acted negligently and to have facilitated and/or permitted the dissemination of hate speech on their networks, inciting acts of violence that constitute international crimes. D. Fake news 88. Equally worrying is the mass dissemination of fake news that can create an atmosphere in which people are at risk of becoming dangerously radicalized, making coexistence difficult. False information is not an exception or hiccup in the democratic process; it reveals and exacerbates the collapse of values and the dissolution of societies. Its appearance in the public sphere must therefore be treated with concern because, as history shows, it has previously been a harbinger of tragedies, bloodshed and pogroms. 89. The situation is particularly serious in fragile States, where institutions are often weak and politicians use sectarian discourse – based on affiliation with an ethnic group, religion, community or clan – and fake news to manipulate identities with the aim of stirring up emotions and setting the stage for violent conflict. In this way, memory and information can easily be weaponized. 50 51 GE.20-09155 Nahimana et al. (Media case) (ICTR-99-52), International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, available at https://unictr.irmct.org/en/cases/ictr-99-52. A/HRC/39/CRP.2, para. 1326. 15