Rwanda: Genocide, Hate Radio and the Power of the Broadcast Word

Abstract

Unlike the previous case study of Nazi Germany, this one of Rwandan radio broadcasts before and during the genocide cannot make extensive references to a wealth of transcript material. Whereas Nazi radio was monitored and transcripts published by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Monitoring Service, this was not the case with RTLM. This station, which became the dominant broadcaster in the year before and during the genocide, was not widely or systematically monitored. Its broadcasting range prevented the BBC Monitoring Service station in Nairobi and the American Foreign Broadcast Information Service station in Kinshasa from picking up its programmes and they did not have in place monitoring capabilities in the Kinyarwanda language (interviews with Greenway and Harmes).

They will be throwing themselves into the mouth of the hyena and committing suicide. They will all be Exterminated and none will live to tell the disastrous story. Let them come, the Rwandans are waiting for them with machetes.

(Comments by Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda broadcast by Radio Televison Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), 12 April 1994)

The Chamber finds that RTLM broadcasts engaged in ethnic Stereotyping in a manner that promoted contempt and hatred for the Tutsi population. RTLM broadcasts called on listeners to seek out and take up arms against the enemy […] These broadcasts called explicitly for the extermination of the Tutsi ethnic group.

(International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Verdict on RTLM and Kangura journalists, nahimana, p. 283)