Introduction
The paper will examine the local and international media, which have played a crucial role in the Rwanda genocide. Local print and radio fueled the killings, while the international media did not take the news seriously and misconstrued events on the ground or even ignored the local reporting. The illiteracy rate was high at the time of the genocide in Rwanda and radio was one of the most important means to deliver the governmental messages to the wider public. It can be stated that the western media, such as CNN, BBC, The New York Times did not maintain the moral ethics of journalism while reporting about the real events in Rwanda. It could have been possible to minimize the loss of life by altering international community of the real events happening on the ground in an accurate and quick manner and not just covered the people and refugees who fled the country.
Background of the conflict
The bloodshed in Rwanda began in the summer of the year 1994. The result of the mass killings and genocide was in every tenth person in the country killed by machetes or other means. 70% of the entire Tutsi population were killed. The genocide was carried out in a short period of time of around three months and resulted in eight hundred thousand deaths. The building up of two different identities among the Rwanda population began with the European colonization by the Belgians and Germans, which introduced differentiation based on race and ethnicity. The colonial times introduced the identity cards with which the segregation and differentiation policy began, which resulted in the devastating consequences years after its implementation. The building of Hutu and Tutsi identity has therefore taken many decades. After the long period of time when Tutsis were privileged and Hutu ethnicity was oppressed majority the country power was shifting between two ethnicities. In the 1994 the Hutus in charge have been the perpetrators of the genocide (Gourevitch, 1998).
The role of the local media
The Hutu government had carefully planned the strategy to carry out the killings in which it used the airways and radio to transmit the propaganda with the lists of names and addresses of the Tutsis around the whole country. The victims were aware of the Hutus plan and have reached out for international help, but the negligence of it has brought no redemption even with the fax send to the United Nations with careful and detailed explained plan of the Hutus (Gourevitch,1998). Based on the Thomson (2007) the majority of the population could not read or write and this is the reason the radio played the most significant role in promoting the genocide propaganda. The first use of radio for the Tutsi killing was seen by the national Radio Rwanda in 1992. Local news media, print and radio played a very important role with fueling the killings and on the other side ignorance of the Western media to report about the happening. The local media were used to promote hate and bloodshed among the population. The country has dedicated the popular radio Radio-Televison Libre des Milles Collines – RTML, which was informal and lively and meant for ordinary citizens’ prior the fighting, entirely to broadcast the genocidal propaganda in an entertaining manner. They have repeated the historical facts about the Tutsis and shared false and inaccurate information in order to achieve resentment. The radio broadcasted in sensational way with the extremist views of naming the national enemies. The radio broadcasted the exact instructions what to do and where to go with which the population was mobilized on the national scale. Even more, after giving the location and names of the Tutsis to be killed the authorities on air congratulated the killers. The impact of radio is seen from the fact that officials have given notice that the radio should be regarded as the direct orders, which must be implemented and have planted and forged events in order to gain credence among the Hutus to radio which all population listened (Thomson, 2007 and Forges, 1994). Hutus used radio to remember the majority of the populations of the past injustice, invasions, slaughters in other countries of Tutsis and the Tutsis time of being in charge under the colonization period. The media in Rwanda played a large role in promoting the genocide. The language used in the local media reporting promoted and convince ordinary citizens to take part of the killings. “RTLM and newspapers like Kangura used inflammatory rhetoric and dehumanizing language to encourage Hutus to take part in the genocide” (Jorgensen, 2007, 2). Radio broadcasting impacted the ordinary civilians as militia group. Based on the Yangagizawa-Drott (2014) 10% of the violence can be attributed to the stations, which influenced around 51.000 perpetrators. The RTML reporting and influence was greater in the villages where the minority of Tutsi resided and among illiterate and uneducated citizens. The main radio station increased the participation in the violence against Tutsis (Yangagizawa-Drott, 2014). The influencing of ordinary people to involve in the atrocities which resulted in around two third of the Tutsi population killed was done with the hate and fear propaganda and with using “noble” lies. The media was one of the weapons used in carrying out the genocide with resentment, fear, anger, pride and hatred (Armoundian,2011).
Role and actions of international community and media
As well as international media also international actions did not help to prevent or limit the genocide. The international community has not done enough and in fact nothing even in hundred days after the massacres were carried out in 1994. The international community was present in the country under the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda – UNAMIR in the leading up to the genocide and some personnel have though the evacuation after the murder of the country’s president stayed in the country, but were unable to protect the population because of the few numbers of 207 soldiers which were under equipped and without the mandate where no weapons were allowed to use. The decision to leave the country by majority of the international force was done even though the human right organizations estimated of many people killed at the time prior the evacuation. There were also reports of the Red Cross, but not even the jamming of the broadcast nor the diplomatic efforts to stop the killings were seen. The misleading media coverage was seen by all western media even the Security Council and Secretary General (Cohen, 2007).
As already stated, the international media from British, French to US media wrongfully reported about the situation in the country and described the situation to simplified without the historical roots that have been the core reason of the genocide. Many blame and believe the international media response can be partly responsible for the terrible events that followed in 1994. The reporting did not increase in the numbers at the start of the atrocities and the media coverage was focused on the plane shut down, refugees and the clashes of the ancient tribal feuds and simplified as African tribalism. When the genocide accelerated the Western press ceased to report about Rwanda. What is even worse is that the western media in the meantime reported about other things in this region and have not used in any report the word genocide but such as Guardian rather used words like apocalypse and others (Allen & Seaton, 1999). International media have failed to cover the genocide, especially in the Anglophone press. The Belgium as the formal colonizer also failed to cover the insight forces of the politics behind the massacre in 1994. There was a possible hypothesis in the papers and the country also knew about the extremist propaganda in Kigali since the Belgium ambassador has been many times targeted on the hate radio. The other Europe media report did not differ a lot, since all nations were focused on the predominantly their countries positive relations with Habyarimana’s Rwanda. International reporting was ignoring the ethnographic. The European as American press failed to report on the atrocities and on the right background for the bloodsheds. For example, the BBC produced seriously distorted image of ethnic class relations with stereotyping in Rwanda prior the genocide, which gave the wrong picture to the whole issue. What is worse the politics and media did not even report about the genocide during and right after its happening. For example, in the year 1994 with the new Rwandan government the Guardian, The Independent, The Times, The Independent on Sunday did not understand the political and historical background and also yet the real happening on the Rwanda grounds. There was no critical reporting or reporting about the internal national tensions since the media focused on the international dimension (Pottier, 2002). Even though there were reports of human violations the international community and media did not recognize the government wrongdoings. In 1990 there was released a report from Germany, France and Belgium ambassadors with stating the warning that the rapid deterioration of relations between two major ethnic groups could result in terrible consequences (Melver, 2007). What is more the report from 1993 of the International Commission of Inquiry into Human Right Abuse in Rwanda has come into the public and the international community and no international media gave any critical response to it (Forges, 1999). If this evidence and other information about the radio coverage and human right violations with the right historical facts would have been published in the western media the response would definitely be different, since the media could mobilize and created responsibility of the international community to involve.
Conclusion
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