Ban urges fight against cyber hate

New York - The shooting attack at Washington's Holocaust Memorial Museum last week is a reminder of the growing use of the internet to propagate hate, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday. 'I call it 'digital demonization' - and we have seen it time and again targeting innocents because of their faith, their race, their ethnicity and their sexual orientation,' Ban said in opening a seminar at UN headquarters on hate in the internet age. 'Here at the UN, we understand the power of words,' he said. 'Words can hurt or they can heal. They can rupture or they can repair.' Ban said James W von Brunn, 88, who opened fired at the Holocaust Memorial last Wednesday and killed one security guard, was well known 'for spewing racist venom through the internet and elsewhere' before attacking the site. US law enforcement authorities said von Brunn, who is a known white supremacist and anti-Semite, was charged with murder and could face hate crime and civil rights charges. The seminar at UN headquarters on cyber hate gathered people who have experienced hate crimes or belong to groups that fight cyber hate. The seminar focused on the impacts of the internet on young people. The UN said hundreds of new internet sites are posted every hour. 'An increasing number of them target religious and ethnic minorities, which can result in threats or violence against these groups,' it said, adding that the phenomenon is a clear violation of human rights and requires a commonly defined fight against it. It said many children have been bullied, threatened and taunted through text messages, social networking sites and chat rooms, which can reach an unlimited number of people. 'If not checked in time, such harassment can have disastrous results including stress, poor grades, inability to cope with the pressure - even suicide,' the UN said.

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WrongJun 25th, 2009 - 14:09:05

Mankind is the root of all evil. Not religion, not guns, not the internet...

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raped by an illegal immigrantJul 16th, 2009 - 04:54:42

I can understand cyber bullying but as far as hate sites, usually its an attack on white racist not anyone else. I think you can hate anyone you want in a free country as long as you don't break the law and not create laws that are racist themselves by applying them only to one race. special interest groups for the advancement of only one race is racist. You are deciding not to help someone else based on race.

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