Panel 1: Hate Media in Rwanda
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Alison Des
Forges, Senior Advisor, Human Rights Watch, author of Leave
None to Tell the Story

Alison Des Forges
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Frank Chalk: Alison Des
Forges is our final panelist.
Alison Des Forges: Thank
you very much. We've heard a little bit this morning about
what the media was saying, and we will hear more, I believe,
as the day goes along, of the specific language so that you
can understand, and get a sense of the flavour of what was
really happening. It was clear to Rwandans themselves long
before the start of the genocide, that the media was being
used to incite violence, and in the Arusha Accords, which
were the peace settlement, there was indeed, a specific provision
against the continuation of incitement to violence through
propaganda. This was, of course, not observed any more than
other parts of the Arusha Accords.
The Minister of Information of the Rwandan
government also attempted to call RTLM to order. So we can
see that the people understood before the start, that the
media had already played a role, and could be expected to
continue playing a role. The print media was important before
April 6, but after April 6, we' re really talking about the
radio, and this is because Kangura stopped publishing, regularly
at least, after April 6.
As has already been said, the radio was
the voice of authority. It was taken as a way of giving directions
to the population. It served essentially three purposes during
the genocide. First of all, incitement, and we' ll hear some
examples of the clear language, the clear call for violence
against Tutsi, and against Hutu whose ideas were opposed to
those of the genocide. There were also examples of specific
orders given, persons identified by name, and their location
given. This goes beyond incitement. This is a clear part of
the communications of the genocidal campaign, and goes a step
beyond what incitement could be. There was one case, for example,
about which I collected testimony, of a man whose children
were specifically named on the radio, and the announcer, Valerie
Bemeriki said over RTLM, " There' s a vehicle approaching
the barrier at the Lycee de Citeaux in central Kigali, and
inside, there' s a family of cockroaches. Stop them!"
And half an hour later, she came on the air to congratulate
the people at the barrier, because they had stopped them,
and gotten rid of them. This so far beyond any exercise of
free speech that it is patently clear.

Alison Des Forges
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There was a third function for the radio,
and it links into what Professor Chrétien was talking
about, and that is the question of legitimacy. People obviously
found it easier to go against all morality and all law, because
they were told, by what was purportedly their legitimate government,
that this was what they should do, what they had to do, and
that they would be punished for not doing it.
Now, the argument that people needed to
kill their neighbors in order to protect themselves, that
this was a form of self-defense, that kind of argument gained
force, because there was no international condemnation of
it. The government was able to continue presenting itself
as legitimate, because it' s representative continued to sit
on the Security Council. By an accident of history, Rwanda
was one of the non-permanent members of the Security Council,
and it continued to sit there. It' s delegation was seated
at the Organization of African Unity. It' s representatives
were received in Paris, and in Cairo. So that it could continue
to present itself to the people as legitimate, and it' s exercise
in genocide as being a form of self-defense that was understood
and accepted by the rest of the world.
Jamming the radio would have had three
important effects. First of all, it would have stopped incitement.
Second of all, it would have interrupted those specific orders
and communications. And third of all, it would have called
into question the legitimacy of the government. This is because
the right to broadcast within a country is, indeed, as General
Dallaire mentioned, an aspect of it' s sovereignty, guaranteed
by international treaty. Were an outside power, either a national
government or an international organization, to intervene,
and to stop those broadcasts, it would be, in fact, a demonstration
that it no longer accepted the sovereignty and legitimacy
of that government. This would have sent a powerful signal
to Rwandans in a way that nothing else could have.
We can see the importance of that kind
of action because once, in fact, there was a response elsewhere
in the world, once you began to get criticisms from the secretary
general, from the Pope, from various national leaders, when
those began to come over the radio waves on BBC, Voice of
America, Air FE, the authorities felt a need to counter them,
and so you then get a series of broadcasts on RTLM reassuring
the population, and saying, " never mind, never mind.
Don' t worry about what they' re saying. Don' t worry what
is going on at Geneva, at the UN Human Rights Commission.
All of that will be forgotten. They did nothing about the
killers in Burundi. They did nothing about the killers in
other parts of the world, and they will do nothing about you
as long as you win the war." So you can see, and we know
from the minutes of meetings of local communal security committees
that they were listening to these radio broadcasts, and that
they were acutely aware of what was being said in the international
community.
So, given all of that, those of us who
were following the situation at the time, and I as a representative
of Human Rights Watch was actively involved at the time. Why
didn' t we do something? Well, we tried, and what we tried
to do was to get the radio jammed, and our argument was, we
understood that after Somalia, it was going to be very difficult
to get a military intervention. But jamming the radio seemed
to be relatively cheap, effective, and could be done without
using ground forces. It could be done from the air. We went
with that argument to Washington. We went to the UN. We took
it to France, because those were the three places, where there
was some realistic possibility they had the technology, and
they had the means to intervene, but as we see from what General
Dallaire said, the UN until late June refused to even speak
out about the radio. It was only in June that the Security
Council made a statement. In France, of course, the reaction
was understandable, because the French government was in effect
closely supporting the government that was carrying out genocide,
but in the U.S., let' s talk for a minute about that. We were
able to have access to the White House, to Anthony Lake, who
was the National Security Advisor to President Clinton, and
we made the plea for jamming the radio, and we know that in
early May, he sent a request to the Secretary of Defense to
investigate jamming the radio. In early June, some of the
senators, Senator Kennedy, in particular, Senator Simon, again
reiterated this request to the Pentagon and to the Department
of State. The answer was no, and the answer was given in three
parts. First of all, freedom of expression. The United States
is a country that is committed to freedom of speech, freedom
of press, freedom of expression. This, of course, totally
ignored the fact that there was precedent in U.S. law for
prohibition and punishment of direct incitement to violence
if it then would produce violence. But that argument was not
given weight.
The second argument was the sovereignty
one, and the third argument was logistically, and military
and financial. It would cost $8,000 an hour for the airplane
to do the jamming. And the calculations that they did based
on that assumed the need for sort of 24-hour coverage all
the time, which wouldn' t have been necessary. A fairly brief
and sporadic interruption would have sent the message.
In the end, there was another reason, of
course. These three reasons they gave us were nothing but
pretexts. There was a more fundamental reason, and that was
that jamming the radio would have been a clear first step.
It would have meant acknowledging what was going on, that
there was, in fact, a genocide, and that that required breaking
international treaty, violating freedom of speech guarantees,
and spending the money, because genocide was more important
than any of the rest. And the problem with that was, if it
didn' t work, if it wasn' t enough, you would have already
taken a step down the path, and you couldn' t go back. You
would have then had to take more steps, put in more resources,
potentially even commit soldiers, because once you had made
clear it was genocide, you couldn' t any longer pretend the
issue was of no importance, and that was fundamentally the
reason that nothing was done.
After the genocide was finished, and the
new government was in power, the U.S., France and the UN all
changed their policies, and took certain measures to jam the
radio, because they had different interests, and the radio
then was attempting to stop the return of refugees back to
Rwanda, and these authorities wanted the refugees to return,
and so they then adopted measures, which made jamming of the
radio possible.
Now, I' d just like to throw out one question
for us to think about as the day goes on, and that is, the
Rwandan case was the simplest, the clearest, the most morally
simple case you can imagine. But, we cannot assume that the
next time will be so clear. We have talked about putting aside
national sovereignty and intervening, and of course, the Canadians
have lead the way with their commission on looking at the
responsibility to protect, but this is a very complex question.
Who is to decide when intervention is appropriate? Would you
like that decision made in Washington? I wouldn' t. Who is
to decide when it is time to intervene? That' s the problem
we all face. Thank you.
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