Reply #16: RTLM, aided by the staff and facilities of Radio Rwanda

[seemslikeadream]

RTLM is the most widely reported symbol of "hate radio" throughout the world. Its broadcasts, disseminating hate propaganda and inciting to murder Tutsis and opponents to the regime, began on 8 July 1993, and greatly contributed to the 1994 genocide of hundreds of thousands.

RTLM, aided by the staff and facilities of Radio Rwanda, the government-owned station, called on the Hutu majority to destroy the Tutsi minority. The programmes were relayed to all parts of the country via a network of transmitters owned and operated by Radio Rwanda. After Rwandan Patriotic Front troops drove the government forces out of Kigali in July 1994, RTLM used mobile FM transmitters to broadcast disinformation from inside the French-controlled zone on the border between Rwanda and Zaire, causing millions of Hutus to flee toward refugee camps where they could be regrouped and recruited as future fighters.

It is widely believed that RTLM was set up to circumvent the ban imposed on "harmful radio propaganda" to which the Rwandan government had formally committed itself to in the March 1993 Dar-Es-Salaam joint communiqué.

Initially, RTLM was not taken seriously by western governments and diplomats. Although RTLM clearly qualified as Map of Rwandaharmful and attacked even members of the diplomatic corps in Kigali, there was no decision to take forceful measures to silence it. The western donors limited themselves to making representations to President Habyarimana who responded by promising to look into it, but not taking any action. Both the French and the American ambassadors opposed any action against RTLM. The US Ambassador at the time claimed that it was the best radio for information and that its euphemisms were subject to many interpretations.

As the then Canadian ambassador, Lucie Edwards, later said: "The question of Radio Mille Collines propaganda is a difficult one. There were so many genuinely silly things being said on the station, so many obvious lies, that it was hard to take it seriously... Nevertheless, everyone listened to it - I was told by Tutsis (sic) - in a spirit of morbid fascination and because it had the best music selection."


http://www.radionetherlands.nl/features/media/dossiers/rwanda-h.html