Today a thread referencing a report @NidhiSuresh_ published on @newslaundry titled, "Harvesting hate: Indian TV is doing what Rwandan genocide trial warned us against. What happens when hate speech is disguised as journalism?"

As India began to experience the early onslaught of COVID-19 in early April, the Tablighi Jamaat’s Nizamuddin headquarters in Delhi became one of India’s 10 coronavirus hotspots. A large section of the media held the Muslim organisation almost solely responsible for the outbreak.

As @Newslaundry documented, the Indian news media called Maulana Muhammad Saad, head of the Tablighi Jamaat, a ‘terrorist’ & ‘the maulana of death, the attendees were described as ‘human bombs’ and linked to terror groups and Pakistan. All without a shred of evidence.

In March, @sudhirchaudhary of @ZeeNews launched a dehumanizing attack on the Muslim minorities fabricating a conspiracy theory around "various kinds of jihad" using a plagiarised chart. Chaudhary’s attempt was to show how “various kinds of jihad” was destroying “Indian culture”

Citing the Rwanda trial, @NidhiSuresh_ quotes a witness who likened crimes of Rwanda Radio RTLM to “spreading petrol throughout the country little by little, so that one day it'd be able to set fire to the whole country”.

The equivalence with Indian media's language was eerie.

Arnab Goswami, of @republic started his primetime show on the Tablighi Jamaat by demanding the nation “wake up” to the realization that “50 percent of India’s COVID cases are because of the Tablighi Jamaat Markaz”.

No source or evidence was cited for the 50 percent figure.

Arnab continued to use dogwhistle narratives to demonize the Muslim community as the dangerous other, blaming the Tablighis for spreading the virus with “acute deliberate callousness”.

“A conspiracy against India will have to be bought down with effectiveness,” he declared.

In a previous Palghar lynching incident, Arnab from @republic had declared, “In a country where 80 percent of the people are Hindu and follow the Sanatan Dharam, it has become a crime to be Hindu.”

The lynching wasn’t communally motivated.

A common theme seen on @republic

The French historian Jean-Pierre Chretien, in the case of Rwanda Genocide, explains how misinformation and propaganda, along with provocation and violent rhetoric, grounded itself within the efficiency of its arguments for uniting the Hutu masses against Tutsis.

In early April, posters read “No Muslim Trader will be Allowed Access to our Hometown until the COVID-19 is Gone” across Mangalore.

According to @guardian , a video shows the panchayat president of Ankanahalli village, warning Hindus who fraternize with Muslims would be fined,

To demonize Muslims, @rahulkanwal from @aroonpurie's @IndiaToday, hosted a primetime show, “Madrasa Hotspot”

The caretakers of the madrassas were maliciously shown to have violated lockdown rules by keeping the students in cramped spaces; also linking them to the Tablighi Jamaat

Misinformation, malice and conspiracy theories, where the common thread between certain events is only the identity of those attached to those events was noted by the judges at the Rwandan Genocide trial - as a deliberate conscious attempt at “infecting minds”.

In India, stereotyping of Muslims is what legitimizes, the brutal assault on Mehboob Ali, 22 returning home to Delhi from a Tablighi Jamaat event in Bhopal, only to be accused of conspiring to spread coronavirus

The demonizing narratives in the media enables this public behavior

. @NidhiSuresh_ concludes:

"As the Rwandan trial shows, only journalistic accountability & viewers' vigilance can protect us against the looming danger

Once we reach the point of no return, of mass murder, it'll be hard to trace the history of violence while counting the dead"