It was like three decades ago (in 1994) that the world witnessed a horrific genocide in Rwanda, the extremist Hutus cleansing the minority Tutsis, Twa and moderate Hutu. Close to one million lives were lost within hundred days. The Rwandan genocide /sometimes referred as ethnocide/ has its own root causes and immediate causes, the historians claim. The root causes were the historical relationships between the two ethnic groups. The feudal system before the 1960 was believed to create tensions between the two groups. This historical grievance was later on aggravated predominantly by the elites from the Hutu majority and then propagated by the polarized media controlled by the Hutu broadcasters and newspapers.
In the early 1990s, some terrifying radio broadcasts emerged in Rwanda. None is however as genocidal as the infamous Radio Télévision Libre Des Mille Collines(RTLM). In its scale and apparent impact, the RTLM has no parallel since the Nazi’s propaganda for genocide against the Jews. It was the RTLM’s call that made Rwanda, a country famous for its hills, its gorillas in the mist and its beauty, become known for its hundreds or perhaps thousands of genocide memorials. According to some literatures, at the genocide’s peak, there were more than five deaths every minute in Rwanda: the rate of killing was three times as rapid as the murder of the Jews in the Second World War. However, unlike in Germany where people were mostly transported to die in gas chambers away from their home communities, many Rwandan women, children and men died from machete blows (such as knives, axes, blades) at the hands of neighbours in their own homes, or nearby, in local churches, hospitals, schools and at roadblocks.
Some historians argue that the RTLM broadcasting doesn’t have to be hold as the sole responsible actor for the Rwandan genocide. These historians suggest that blaming the RTLM for everything that happened within those hundred days is trying to deny a responsibility for the very root causes that led to the killings. They don’t however refute the colossal role the RTLM has been playing since its establishment a year before the genocide. After RTLM was found in July 1993, the airwaves of Rwanda were filled with new sounds that were echoing racial hatred and ethnic violence. Even though there were other media outlets echoing hatred and violence (such as the Hutu extremist newspaper ‘Kangura’, meaning ‘Wake him up’), the public communication was dominated by RTLM since nearly half of the Rwandan populace was not literate – couldn’t read nor write. Not-so-far after RTLM began broadcasting, it provided for a for Hutu extremists so that they could articulate old grievances and racial hate speeches. It didn’t too long for almost everyone to tune its radio to RTLM. And the radio station infamously contributed to the escalation of the tense ethnic hostilities.
The RTLM has exploited the ‘unjust’ relationship between the Hutus and the Tutsis during the reign of feudal regime before the 1960s. Using this as a fertile ground, the RTLM propagated a racial hatred against the Tutsis. The Tutsis were demonized by the RTLM as the Jews were by the Nazi Germany. The Tutsis were portrayed by the RTLM as the ones who controlled all the wealth of the nation. This made the majority Hutus feel exploited and excluded by the Tutsi minority and hence made feelings of injustice accentuate further. The Hutus stayed tuned to the radio and kept reading extremist papers like Kangura that had been suggesting that the Tutsi had infiltrated positions of power like ‘snakes’ in order to restore the old pre-1959 feudal regime where the Tutsi would once again control the country. The media kept on championing the 1959 revolution where the Tutsi leadership was overthrown, as ‘a heritage that should be carefully maintained and transmitted to posterity’. It was this historical ‘grievances’ that served as a root cause for the genocide in mid 1990s. This is why some historians claim the role the RTLM broadcast and other media outlets played in the genocide as an immediate cause. They even argue that the genocide would have happened sooner or later without the broadcast of the RTLM, even though they agree on the adversarial role it played.
To mention some of the hate speeches and statements of racial hatreds the RTLM and other media were using before and during the killings in Rwanda; “You cockroaches must know you are made of flesh! We won’t let you kill! We will kill you!’’, “I tell you that the Gospel has already changed in our movement. If someone gives you a slap, give him two in return, two fatal ones”, “A Cockroach Cannot Give Birth To A Butterfly”, “Any Hutu who marries or befriends a Tutsi woman, or does business with a Tutsi is to be called a traitor”, “the cruelty of the Inyenzi [cockroaches] is incurable, the cruelty of the Inyenzi can only be cured by their total extermination’; the term Inyenzi had come to mean: a person or animal to be killed”. One Canadian journalist described how ‘Hutus could be seen listening attentively to every broadcast, they held their cheap radios in one hand and machetes in the other, ready to start killing once the order had been given’.
It was of course right after the shooting down of the Falcon jet carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi on 6th of April 1994 roadblocks had been set up in Kigali, Rwanda that the highly organized and pre-planned killing campaign begin. The RTLM finally got the best opportunity it has been waiting for to ring the bell of death. The radio has explicitly been encouraging the Hutus to fight saying, ‘take your spears, clubs, guns, swords, stones, everything, sharpen them, hack them, those enemies, those cockroaches, those enemies of democracy, show that you can defend yourselves’. The next 100 days were the worst ones in the history of Rwanda ever. Most Rwandans are still suffering from the agony of the bloodbath.
Meanwhile, the world has been following what was going on but gave deaf ears and did nothing to preclude the leviathan from taking a million lives. The former colonizers, the neighboring countries, the Organization of African Unity, the United Nations and many other regional and international organizations failed in all aspects of institutional and humanitarian deeds. The then Secretary-General of the UN, Boutros Ghali, admitted: ‘We are all to be held accountable for this failure, all of us, the great powers, African countries, the NGOs, the international community. It is genocide…I have failed…It is a scandal’.
What ample lesson for us (Ethiopians) to learn from Rwanda’s genocide! It is anyone’s imagination what would have happened in Ethiopia after the killing of Artist Hachalu Hundessa if God hasn’t miraculously intervened and halted the call for the violence propagated by the polarized media. Hundreds of innocent lives and properties worth of hundreds of millions were lost within hours. The media of few opposition groups (home and abroad) rang the bell of ethnic violence and succeeded to some extent. Had it not been for the collaborated intervention of the military and the peace loving silent majority, the violence could have been catastrophic. Following the adverse consequences on life and property, the government fared to shut down those media outlets from the satellite though they managed to get back on air with the help of foreign adversaries.
There are major lessons we can learn from the Rwanda’s case. As explained above, the RTLM didn’t just succeed in becoming the popular radio, rather it used the historical grievances to create and articulate realities in the minds of the people. It doesn’t matter whether the historical grievances are real or not, what matters is whether it can make a difference or not in influencing the mass. It was the perceived ‘historical grievance’ that created the RTLM not vice versa. It is not however to deny the adverse impact that the media (such as RTLM) plays is influencing people on what to think and what to think about. Therefore, the government has to create a room for some extremist opposition to exercise their freedom of speech lest they find other means and toil in the proliferation of fake news, hate speech and disinformation. In the era of technology, it is very difficult to block all the media outlets for long. And given the shrewd nature of human beings where the tendency to cleave towards such media outlets upturns, blocking the outlets can’t be considered as a long-term solution. In addition, the mainstream media has to come up with counter-narratives to falsify the false narratives aired on such media. When things trespass redline, appropriate legal and other necessary measures should be considered. The oppositions, on the other hand, need to come to their senses and try to find an amicable way to contribute their part in building a democratic culture. On the whole, it is worth dealing with the root causes and be able to reach on consensus; otherwise the short-term solutions are just postponements of current violence.
Stay Home! Stay Safe!
The Ethiopian Herald July 30, 2020
BY WOSSENSEGED ASSEFA
