A/HRC/45/45 presence of four journalists in Guernica 43 during the Spanish Civil War made it possible to report on the first aerial bombing and destruction of a city, establishing the truth about the attack carried out by the German and Italian air forces while Franco’s propaganda machine was blaming communist or anarchist “dynamiters”. The articles by Roy Gutman published in New York Newsday 44 in July 1992 informed the world about the existence of the infamous prison camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Rwandan genocide was also documented in real time by the press in 1994.45 More recently, journalists working for the Reuters news agency spent over 500 days in prison for reporting on the atrocities committed against the Rohingya in Myanmar.46 78. The Special Rapporteur is deeply concerned about the possible dangerous manipulation of information and memory to the detriment of human rights, the stigmatization of certain communities and hate speech that encourages the commission of violent acts and even mass violence. 79. Discriminatory, racist, ultra-nationalist and hate-filled speech abounds in the world. Incitement to violence also proliferates on social networks, fuelling the polarization and radicalization of social behaviour, including violent acts. Specific State actions are needed to respond to these challenges. 80. The Rabat Plan of Action on the prohibition of advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence47 provides valuable guidance to ensure the indispensable right to freedom of expression 48 and the fulfilment of States’ obligation to prohibit any expression that constitutes hate speech or incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence. 49 The Rabat Plan of Action identifies six criteria for defining acts that constitute incitement to hatred and are therefore offences that must be prohibited. These are: (a) The context, which has a direct bearing on causation or intent; (b) The speaker’s position; (c) The object or intent, which requires the activation of a triangular relationship between the object and subject of the speech act as well as the audience; (d) The content of the speech act; (e) The extent of the speech act, such as its public or non-public nature and the media used to disseminate it; (f) The likelihood, including the imminence, of a direct causal link between the hate speech and specific acts of violence. 81. The Special Rapporteur stresses that the right to information or any other human right may not be used as a pretext to justify acceptance of the advocacy of hatred. B. Criminal responsibility of ideologues and propagandists 82. The responsibility of ideologues and propagandists was clearly established as early as 1946 by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, which convicted Julius 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 14 Four journalists went to Guernica on the same day: George Steer (The Times (London) and The New York Times), Noel Monks (The London Daily Express), Christopher Holme (Reuters) and Mathieu Corman (Ce Soir). Roy Gutman, New York Newsday, “Hidden Horror”, 19 July 1992; “Witness tells of Serbian Death Camp”, 19 July 1992; “For Muslims, Misery”, 21 July 1992. See in particular the French media in 1994, Marc Le Pape, “Des journalistes au Rwanda. L’histoire immédiate d’un génocide”, in Claudine Vidal and Marc Le Pape (eds.), “Les politiques de la haine: Rwanda, Burundi, 1994–1995”, Les Temps Modernes, No. 583, July–August 1995, pp. 161–180. www.voanews.com/world-press-freedom/profiles-reuters-journalists-who-exposed-myanmaratrocities. A/HRC/22/17/Add.4. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 19. Ibid., art. 20; International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, art. 4. GE.20-09155