COMUNICACIÓN

CAMPUS YUSTE ANALYSES HATE SPEECH, RADICALISATION, EXTREMISM AND TERRORISM

The Director of the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation, Juan Carlos Moreno, opened the course “Proposals for Preventing and Combating Radicalisation and Hate Crime in the European Context”, which will take place at the Royal Monastery of Yuste until Friday.

During his speech, the Director pointed out that the different subjects dealt with in the summer courses, which have brought together over a hundred speakers and three hundred students from twenty six different nationalities, “have taught us that there are plenty of ways to think, believe, live, love or disagree, but at the same time there are many who do not acknowledge these different ways, and this is precisely what we will be dealing with; something that occasionally causes hate crime, a crime that attacks that protected legal asset which is the right to disagree, the right to be different, the right to be equals, which lies within every individual, but is also enshrined concretely and exhaustively in Article 14 of the Constitution”.

According to Moreno Piñero, this course is the final culmination of the six weeks holding courses in Yuste, because it clearly sums up the experience: “we are all different, we are all the same; the right to disagree exists as does the right to be equals and this Right (the Law) serves to protect this legal asset”.

The director of the course and State Ecclesiastical Law Professor at the University of Extremadura, Jaime Rossell Granados, defined a radical person as “someone who has an intransigent point of view and becomes an extremists when believing that there can only be a society as he/she conceives it and, finally, terrorism is reached when that extremist uses violence to impose his/her point of view”.

As a second reflection, Rosell Granados explained that “hate speech, a possible trigger or first stage before reaching other positions” is proper of terrorists and extremists”.

In this sense, he explained that one of the bases of the course is hate speech; which are the limits; how this speech is dealt with in some legal cultures, such as the American, and which limitations are set in Europe regarding that same speech; how radicalisation becomes extremism and, thus, which are the public policies to prevent all these issues.

Rosell Granados recalled that the European Union has been working in the fight against radicalisation for many years, fostering different ways of neutralisation and giving priority to the prevention of radicalisation from the legal point of view, “which is why the course will also delve into the legal framework that attempts to avoid radicalisation; the educational framework; the social role and the role of the third sector”.

The Vice rector of Students, Employment and Mobility of the University of Extremadura, Rocío Yuste Tosina, closed the round of speeches pointing out that education is “the great tool to bring about a better world and it should be the essential vehicle to prevent violent and radical conduct”.

According to her, until present day governments, institutions and politicians in charge fight against these attitudes and conduct “not really understanding what they are and how they are brought about, which is why if we focus our actions on dialogue, democratic values, tolerance and human rights, we will be able to fight against it in a real and efficient manner”.

Rocío Yuste added that education should help young people to “discern between religion as a peace and democracy disseminator and the interpretation of religion as a political mechanism used for radicalisation”.

Lastly, the Vice rector referred to the different educational programmes carried out by the UNESCO in order to help the most vulnerable young people “increase their resilience when facing radicalism and increase their capacity to give a resistant and committed answer”.

The course, included in the programme Campus Yuste of the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation, is organised along with Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government and is held within the framework of the International Summer Courses of the University of Extremadura.