Call to genocide: radio in Rwanda

http://www.idrc.ca/rwandagenocide/ev-108178-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

by b-man • 16 years ago

10 15 16 years ago

kierank2• 16 years ago

What is more dangerous in my opinion is the use of the internet for spreading mistruths that could lead to terrible consequences. On a much lower level you see countless facebook groups protesting against things which are untrue as well as false rumours perpetuating on twitter and other social networking sites with no level of moderation. Virtually all of this has been relatively benign so far but this could quite easily go the other way. However, the internet does have the advantage that people generally take it with a "pinch of salt". Nevertheless Voltaire's quote could still ring true one day:

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

tome• 16 years ago

I don't doubt what you're saying at all, but do you have any specific examples in mind? I'd be interested to see.

kierank2• 16 years ago

There was a Facebook campaign about a year ago saying that the British Government was going to use taxpayers money to build a £100 million super-mosque in London.

If I remember rightly the mayor's office had to publically come out and say that no taxpayer money was being used after the Facebook group had many hundreds of thousands of members.

In this case the harm was pretty minimal but in a climate that was more turbulent the wrong message on "real-time" social media could cause a dangerous situation.

schacon• 16 years ago

I think the major and very important difference is that the internet is basically totally free. For every Facebook group spewing some idiotic nazi crap there are three condemning it. If you let anyone stand on their little soapbox and say anything, then sure - people already inclined to thinking that way will stay and listen but everyone else will walk by. If, however, it's the only person speaking and you're forced to hear it, then that's different.

In Rwanda there was essentially one radio station, completely controlled by the genocidares, spewing the sort of hate mongering that makes Sean Hannity look like Sesame Street. It helped them fan the flames and importantly, it helped them coordinate efficiently. It's not necessarily why there was a genocide there, but it's largely why it was so completely effective.

It's also worth noting that this was 15 years ago - Rwanda is an amazing place to visit now. It is safe and beautiful there is some fantastic eco-tourism. If you ever have the opportunity, go gorilla trekking there, it's unbelievable.

patio11• 16 years ago

This is one of the canonical "technology is not always a positive" stories. (I know, radios don't kill people, people kill people, but radios make people damn more efficient at killing people.)

cwan3• 16 years ago

Not sure I agree with that - certainly, radio became a catalyst to incite violence, but the problem wasn't radio, but that there weren't enough radio voices. Media was primarily state controlled as the article points out and Tutsis were used as scape goats for all manner of problems at the time.

The problem in believing that it's 'technology can be a negative' in this case is that the solution for some people would be to ration and control what technology gets distributed which perversely is the reasoning for the government run media and lack of competition ('the news is too important to let private enterprise bias the public').

Finally, while I can accept that radio was a catalyst, the groundwork for the genocide was laid long in advance and facilitated by France (http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=1940) in the last couple decades. The silly conspiracy theories the US gets frequently accused of, France actually did in Rwanda (and continues to attempt to do in many former colonies with their foreign policy based more on mercantilism than trade - only the most recent example being Cote D'Ivoire).

What is most troubling about Rwanda is how (at least until Sarkozy was elected), France defends its role and also members of the government that initiated this genocide at the UN. It's little wonder then when I visited Rwanda (possibly one of the biggest emotional experiences of my life was after hearing the director of a orphanage speak in graphic detail of some of the horrifying massacres and killings that took place), that everyone seemed to want to learn English.

cynicalkane• 16 years ago

[citation needed]

The article you linked claims that Hutu and Tsuti are little more than social constructs. There's a certain class of Marxist-influenced academics who like to blame everything on social constructs and ruling classes.

However, the Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_Tutsi_and_Hutu , though it discusses the Western influence on conceptions of race in Rwanda, presents arguments that Hutus and Tutsis are of different genotypes.

In short, it takes more than the hearsay of this French guy I haven't heard of to convince me that an ongoing French "conspiracy" (which the article you linked made no mention of, by the way) is responsible for turmoil in several parts of Africa. As if there wouldn't be any violence in those places if those meddling French would just stop conspiring. Please post something to support you view, if you have anything.

bilbo0s2• 16 years ago

What?

Central Africa is a mess.

Rwandans massacre people in the Congo regularly even now. You claim to have been to Rwanda, have you ever heard of Laurent Nkunda? Enough said.

Rwanda is a textbook case of how victims can become victimizers pretty much overnight.

"What is most troubling about Rwanda is how (at least until Sarkozy was elected), France defends its role and also members of the government that initiated this genocide at the UN..."

Uhh . . . so what happened in Goma and countless other places in the Congo is less troubling to you than a bunch of lawyers arguing in a European courtroom?

I'm sure any Congolese the Rwandans have not killed yet are happy to hear that. Or they would be if the rebels had not cut their ears off.

Central africa is a thousand times worse than Darfur in terms of loss of life and limb. And the Rwandans are normally central to most of the trouble. By the way, when I say loss of life and LIMB...yeah...this is Africa we're talking about so take that literally.

Since we're on the subject of 'trouble catalysts' let us not forget France, US and the UK. All generally, only an arms shipment removed from a Congolese girl being raped by a Tutsi prior to having her leg chopped off.

Sorry about this rant, but man . . . Peace Corps . . . you work and work and work and in the end, France and the US have a pissing match and POOF . . . two years of your life pissed away. And MOST importantly, dear friends and children you taught to play jax 'disappeared'.

Instead of continuing this rant I'll just conclude with a repost of part of my last comment on Rwanda:

"Rwanda last year exported 250 million USD worth of coltan. Unfamiliar with what coltan is? It's the African name for columbite-tantalite. Still not ringing a bell? Well you can extract niobium and, most importantly, tantalum from it. The same tantalum that facilitates the use of that nice shiny iPhone you probably own. Don't own an iPhone? You still use tantalum, it's in every other cell phone too! As well as your laptop, and DVD player but I digress.

I was talking about the 250 million USD worth of coltan that Rwanda sold on the global market last year. Yeah, a curious thing though, Rwanda does not have any natural deposits of coltan. The only deposits in the area are in DR Congo. Where Rwanda is supporting Tutsi militias to 'protect the people from discrimination'. Someone must have forgotten to tell the people though, because every time the Tutsi militias approach a city, the people flee in terror.

I recently spoke with a Swiss friend of mine who stayed with me for a while after returning from the Congo and before she went back to Lausanne. She works for the UN and had occasion to go meet Laurent NKunda before the rest of the world woke up to what Rwanda was up to. Laurent Nkunda is the leader of these Tutsi 'protectors'. At any rate, as she traveled up the road from the lines of the government troops to Nkunda's, she noticed something at the roadblock he had set up that told her all she needed to know about him. You see, his roadblock was composed of the bodies of his victims, topped with heads..."

I don't know what troubles me MOST about Rwanda, but I know I won't find it in a European courtroom.

furyg3• 16 years ago

Nowadays it's being used for good there, as well:

http://www.labenevolencija.org/en/current-activities/great-l...

A friend of mine is doing some research with them, and I've had the pleasure of meeting several people involved with the organization here in Holland.

They use a dramatic soap-opera format to follow the lives of some characters during a horrible series of events, their experiences, conflicts, etc. Something like 90% of radio-owners in Rwanda listens to the program regularly.

The goal is to teach how cycles of violence can be cut short, to lend a platform so that people can think about and discuss their experiences, and to help give tools to individuals to help deal with the psychological trauma that nearly everyone there shares.

sosha• 16 years ago

The sad thing is, 16 years after the Rwandan genocide, most of the countries in Eastern and Central Africa are unstable and deeply divided between tribal lines and are fast heading towards becoming failed states. Kenya is a good example; after the 2007 General elections burst into chaos fueled by Private Ethnic Radio stations and SMS messages.

If nothing is going to be done soon, either Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda or DRC will fall into genocide preetty soon. My bet is on Kenya during the 2012 General Elections.

The radio stations there are starting to sound as Radio Rwanda. The first thing someone asks you is your tribe!

Sanctions need to be imposed on the leaders of this countries or else the Rwandan genocide will look like a Christmas party.

RiderOfGiraffes• 16 years ago

While I not only concede but actively promote this to be an important issue, I nonetheless question that it belongs on HN. It's not something that, in the words of the guidelines, gratifies my intellectual curiosity.

The problem is, for technical people who are in a community whose members they respect, where else can they go to discuss things like this?

b-man• 16 years ago

The use of social media (as in local and national radio with social participation) and radio as triggers and facilitators for deep cultural and social changes does gratify my intellectual curiosity, that's why I posted it.

It's not just a political thing, this genocide was shaped by the use of current technology, and it is a hint of what could be coming in the future in my opinion.

Call to genocide: radio in Rwanda

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