Words: 691
Media Propaganda The cover of the December 1993 issue of Kangura. The title states, “Tutsi: Race of God”, while the text to the right of the machete states, “Which weapons are we going to use to beat the cockroaches for good? “. The man pictured is the second president of the First Republic, Gregoire Kayibanda, who made Hutu the governing ethnicity after the 1959 massacres. According to recent commentators the news media played a crucial role in the genocide: local print and radio media fuelled the killings, while the international media either ignored or seriously misconstrued events on the ground. 6] The print media in Rwanda is believed to have started hate speech against Tutsis which was later continued by radio stations. According to commentators anti-Tutsi hate speech “became so systemic as to seem the norm. ” The state-owned newspaper Kangura had a central role, starting an anti-Tutsi and anti-RPF campaign in October 1990. In the ongoing International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the individuals behind Kangura have been accused of producing leaflets in 1992 picturing a machete and asking “What shall we do to complete the social revolution of 1959? – a reference to the politically orchestrated communal violence in 1959 that resulted in thousands of mostly Tutsi casualties and forced roughly 300,000 Tutsis to flee to neighboring Burundi and Uganda. Kangura also published the infamous “10 Hutu Commandments,” which called upon Hutus to massacre Tutsis, and more generally communicated the message that the RPF had a devious grand strategy (one feature article was titled “Tutsi colonization plan”). 7] Due to high rates of illiteracy at the time of the genocide radio was an important way for the government to deliver messages to the public. Two key radio stations in inciting violence before and during the genocide were Radio Rwanda and Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines(RTLM). In March 1992, Radio Rwanda was first used in directly promoting the killing of Tutsi in Bugesera, south of the national capital Kigali. Radio Rwanda repeatedly broadcast a communique warning that Hutu in Bugesera would be attacked by Tutsi.
A message used by local officials to convince Hutu that they needed to protect themselves by attacking first. Led by soldiers, Hutu civilians and members of the Interahamwe, subsequently attacked and killed hundreds of Tutsi. [8] End of 1993 the RTLM’s highly sensationalised reporting on the assassination of the Burundi president, a Hutu, was used to underlined supposed Tutsi brutality. The RTLM falsely reported that the president had been tortured, including castration of the victim (in pre-colonial times, some Tutsi kings castrated defeated enemy rulers).
From late October 1993 RTLM repeatedly broadcasted themes developed by the extremist written press, underlining the inherent differences between Hutu and Tutsi, the foreign origin of Tutsi, the disproportionate share of Tutsi wealth and power, and the horrors of past Tutsi rule. RTLM also repeatedly stressed the need to be alert to Tutsi plots and possible attacks and called upon Hutu to prepare to ‘defend’ themselves against the Tutsi. 9] After the 6 April 1994 authorities used RTLM and Radio Rwanda to spur and direct killings, specifically in areas where the killings initially were resisted. Both radio stations were used to incite and mobilize, then to give specific directions for carrying out the killings. [10] The RTLM had used terms like inyenzi and Tutsi interchangeably with others referring to RPF combatants and warned specifically that RPF combatants dressed in civilian clothes were mingling among displaced people fleeing combat zones.
These broadcasts gave the impression that all Tutsi were necessarily supporters of the RPF force fighting against the government. [11] Women were part of the anti-Tutsi propaganda prior the 1994 genocide, for example the “Ten Hutu Commandments” published in December 1990 by “Kangura” included four commandments which portrayed Tutsi women as tools of the Tutsi community, as sexual weapons that would be used by the Tutsi to weaken and ultimately destroy the Hutu men. 12] Gender based propaganda also include cartoons printed in newspapers depicting Tutsi women as sex objects. Examples of gender based hate propaganda used to incite war rape include statements by perpetrators such as “You Tutsi women think that you are too good for us” and “Let us see what a Tutsi woman tastes like “. [13]