Chief Justice Ian Kawaley has upheld the decision to place controversial United States speaker Ayo Kimathi on the stop list, labelling his presentation hate speech.

Mr Kimathi, also known as the “Irritated Genie”, was brought to the island to deliver a presentation advertised as focusing on African culture in September 2015.

However, his speech drew harsh criticism for describing homosexuality as a cancer that originated from white Europeans along with other forms of “sexual deviance” including child molestation, bestiality, rape and interracial sex.

On his own website, War On The Horizon, Mr Kimathi further endorsed the killing of whites and “black traitors”.

Mr Kimathi and David Tucker, who organised the visit, launched a legal action against Senator Michael Fahy, then Minister of Home Affairs, who placed Mr Kimathi on the stop list, and the Human Rights Commission, which had announced it would investigate the event.

In a judgment delivered in the Supreme Court yesterday Mr Justice Kawaley found the presentation by Mr Kimathi an “unfiltered message of hate”, that Mr Fahy had acted within his powers in the interests of good government and that the HRC was right to investigate.

He wrote: “In my judgment, it required very little analysis to entitle the minister to conclude that encouraging Bermudians of African descent to regard Europeans, Arabs and Asians as their enemies, encouraging African-Bermudians to pursue a separatist economic and social agenda (which included shunning African-Bermudian homosexuals altogether) amounted to ‘hate speech’.”

Mr Justice Kawaley noted the recession, which he said laid bare the longstanding disparities of wealth on the island, and increasing tensions between those who benefit from international business and those who have been marginalised by it.

“The minister’s evidence overall clearly indicates that his main aim was to promote the interests of ‘good government’ by demonstrating a strong response to statements which appeared likely to promote hatred towards and discrimination against one or more minority groups in Bermuda,” he wrote.

“As a matter of common sense, community tensions were merely indicative of ill-defined public order threats. Tensions were more clearly grounds for concerns that the effects of ‘hate speech’ were more likely to have a negative impact.

“In my judgment, it was not necessary for the minister to wait for more concrete evidence of harm before taking pre-emptive action.”

He added that while the decision had contravened the applicant’s freedom of expression, the interference was reasonably required and legally justified.

The judgment also supported the executive officer of the HRC decision to investigate Mr Kimathi and their referral of the incident to a tribunal, saying: “The EO and the HRC are charged with protecting human rights and have a statutory duty to uphold human rights and condemn those who they genuinely believe are interfering with human rights.

“There will frequently be difficult choices to be made when rights conflict. The present case did not present such difficulties.”

However, the court did challenge the executive officer’s decision to refer David Tucker, who organised the presentation, to a tribunal, finding that no clear breach of the Human Rights Act was disclosed in connection to that applicant.

While the HRC argued that Mr Tucker should have been aware of what the contents of Mr Kimathi’s presentation were going to be, the Chief Justice wrote: “If it was so obvious that Mr Kimathi was an unsuitable speaker, he ought not have been permitted by the minister to enter Bermuda in the first place.”

Mr Justice Kawaley later noted the past presentations on African culture organised by Mr Tucker, saying the series was motivated by a desire to mitigate the modern-day effects of historic discrimination in Bermuda.

“The broader picture should not be distorted by the intense scrutiny which the most offensive statements, made mainly at the culmination of Mr Kimathi’s remarks, has been subjected to, nor indeed the fact that Mr Tucker adopts many of the views,” he wrote.

“Another closely connected background factor is that Mr Kimathi was given permission to enter Bermuda despite being on record for expressing similarly ‘extremist’ views. This made it reasonable for Mr Tucker to assume that, as in America, Mr Kimathi was perfectly free to express himself without legal impediment.

“Ignorance of the law is, of course, no excuse. I have merely sought to avoid viewing Mr Tucker’s enthusiastic endorsement of his guest’s remarks through the unfairly distorting lens of hindsight.”

As a result, the Chief Justice quashed the decision by the executive officer to refer the complaint against Mr Tucker to a tribunal, but dismissed the other complaints made against the executive officer and Mr Fahy.

• To read the full judgment, click on the pdf link under Related Media