Mille Collines Research Articles

How Radio Affects Violent Conflict: New Evidence from Rwanda

Researchers have long debated how radio broadcasts affected the dynamics of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, with some arguing that the radio was highly consequential, and others suggesting such effects have been overstated. This article contributes to these debates—as well as to debates regarding the role of old and new media in collective action—by examining whether and how Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (Radio RTLM) coverage was associated with two core aspects of the violence: (1) subnational onset of genocidal violence and (2) participation in genocidal violence across subnational spaces. Drawing on new data on Radio RTLM coverage, we find that areas with coverage were more likely to experience immediate onset of violence. However, our analysis of participation in the genocide—which uses more accurate measures of participation and of radio coverage than prior studies—finds no significant association between Radio RTLM coverage and subnational levels of participation. After illustrating that these results are robust to numerous model specifications, we theorize that information broadcast over the radio’s airways contributed to the creation of a critical mass that initiated genocide in localized spaces. We conclude by considering the importance of understanding the role of media in the subnational onset of violence.

The Truth and the Pain: A Reading of Edouard Kayihura’s <i>Inside the Hotel Rwanda</i> and Marie Béatrice Umutesi’s <i>Surviving the Slaughter</i>

Literary realism focuses on everyday people, issues, characters, settings and situations that are real. Some writers engage realism to document their real-life experiences. The readers as well tend to gain access to real life events as vivid as the writers can recollect them. Fictitious approaches are avoided completely in these narrations. This is done to ensure that the readers can identify with the stories being narrated. Hence, the 1994 genocide has been the major focus of contemporary Rwanda prose narratives. They project the experiences of the people before, during and after the genocide. Also, some authors document their experiences as suggested by their therapists, because it usually helps as one of the coping mechanisms for trauma. This study delves into the analysis of two post-genocide prose narratives. It adopts the use of postcolonial and trauma theories as the tools for conceptualizing, understanding and interpretation of these prose narratives. Marie Béatrice Umutesi’s <i>Surviving the Slaughter: The ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire </i>and Edouard Kayihura’s<i> Inside the Hotel Rwanda: The Surprising True Story and Why It Matters Today </i>are autobiographies, they depict the causes of the genocide, the outcomes, specifically on the victims and hopefully the solutions. Edouard Kayihura suffers harrowing experiences of perpetual fear, oppression and extortion inside the Hotel des Mille Collines, this is his own truth, debunking the inaccuracies of the movie Hotel Rwanda. While, Marie Béatrice Umutesi, a Hutu woman witnesses and experiences inexplicable brutality and hardship. She endures the pains as she journeys towards safety. This study interrogates the contributions of political hegemony and identity crises to varying degrees of trauma and explains that the experiences and pains of these writers are factual. It also establishes that these prose narratives serve dual purposes of correcting a false claim and projecting the pain of a Hutu woman, a unique diversion from the popular focus on the Tutsis.

Professional Women as Perpetrators: A Conversation with Valérie, “Rwanda’s Voice of Death”

ABSTRACT The literature on women’s participation in genocide and related violence focuses on the actions of women who are either at the very top or at the very bottom of social hierarchies. Exceptional roles played by a select few elite women prosecuted at international criminal tribunals have been recognized. Scholars have also examined the motivations of ordinary women who are swayed by ethnocentric scapegoating or commit violence out of fear and coercion, including social and economic incentives. In-depth analyses of female perpetrators in the professionals category who, along with men in that category, serve as bridgemakers between commoners and leaders are scarce. With the exception of nurses, teachers, and secretaries involved in the Holocaust, the professionals category is gravely understudied in scholarship on perpetrators. This article begins to rectify this gap by examining the case of Valérie Bemeriki who, as a journalist for the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), promoted the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Valérie is a perpetrator who was intimately close to many Rwandans, including her victims, through the radio, yet she is simultaneously unfamiliar as her motivations have not been widely disclosed. The article provides an interpretive analysis of my interview with Valérie, radio transcripts of Valérie’s hate speech obtained by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and Rwandan and international newspapers and secondary source materials concerning Valérie. The findings suggest that perpetrators in the professionals category convey a contradictory experience in their motivations during the violence and their grievances in the aftermath. While Valérie minimized her agency in the genocidal machine, emphasizing structural constraints, she actively distinguished herself from powerless commoners, including Rwandan women living in a deeply patriarchal society. The article portrays Valérie as a strategic professional who hoped to excel by catering to powerful political figures.

The role of Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines in the Rwandan genocide : An analysis from the theoretical perspectives of intergroup threat and aggression

This research focuses on the role of Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) in the Rwandan genocide. It analyzes the radio broadcasts through the prism of theories of intergroup threat and aggression. In this perspective, this medium is conceived as a manipulative and propagandist agent which participated in the perpetration of mass killings constituting the Rwandan genocide, through the dissemination of the ideology of hatred before and during the genocide and the logistical assistance provided to those involved in the killings. Indeed, RTLM broadcasts were structured in such a way as to present the Hutu as victims (intergroup threat), with the aim of justifying the use of violent actions against Tutsi (intergroup aggression). The corpus to be analyzed consists of extracts from RTLM broadcasts selected from transcripts stored at the Montreal Institute of Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) and at the International Monitor Institute (IMI). These extracts were analyzed with the method of discourse analysis. They reveal that RTLM’s discourse was based on the victimization and glorification of Hutus, as well as the devaluation and demonization of Tutsis. Concretely, the radio broadcasts were structured in such a way as to incite Hutu (past and present victims of injustice) to exterminate Tutsi (the enemies, the "cockroaches" (inyenzi)) and to eradicate them from Rwandan society. They were built around two main themes, including the threat, which includes elements like propaganda and hatred, homogenization, categorization and victimization ; and aggressiveness which includes the revolutionary vision of Rwanda, the deshumanization of Tutsi, their designation as enemies, the search for a just and homogeneous society.

Seeing the Genocide against the Tutsi through someone else’s eyes: Prosthetic memory andHotel Rwanda

Alison Landsberg’s theory of ‘prosthetic memory’ suggests that memories are not ‘owned’, that is they do not depend on lived experience, but rather they can occur as a result of an individual’s engagement with a mediated representation (e.g. a film, a museum, a TV series, a novel). One of the best-known mass cultural responses to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda is Terry George’s 2004 feature film, Hotel Rwanda. While the film was a huge commercial success, Rwandan survivor testimonies paint a very different picture of what happened in the real ‘Hotel Rwanda’ (the Hôtel des Mille Collines in the Rwandan capital of Kigali). This article discusses the different versions of the ‘Hotel Rwanda’ story through the lens of prosthetic memory and considers the usefulness of Landsberg’s theory for analysing memory narratives from or about Rwanda. While Landsberg promotes prosthetic memories as ‘in the best cases’ capable of generating empathy and political alliances, I show that, when mass-mediated representations create revisionist false ‘memories’, this can have harmful consequences for survivors of trauma. After focusing on the ethical implications of what Landsberg describes as ‘seeing through someone else’s eyes’, I conclude that prosthetic memory is a concept that should be treated with caution.

When the past talks to the present: fiction narrative and the ‘other’ in Hotel Rwanda

Hotel Rwanda is a story presented through the Hutu hero, Paul Rusesabagina, and his plight for the survival of nearly 1 268 refugees in the Mille Collines Hotel during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Though Paul is the hero, the film ultimately also presents him as an ‘other’, as the reading of the genocide is ultimately through Western eyes. This article analyses how Paul is marginalised and presented as ‘other’, and argues that this representation counteracts his hero status. The discussion examines the classical Hollywood formula and draws on various notions of ‘othering’, as discussed by Edward Saïd (1979), Renata Salecl (Laclau 1994) as well as Slavoj Žižek (1997), to examine how Paul is presented as a marginalised hero who embodies various notions of the ‘other’. The discussion draws on these diverse perspectives because they provide insight into how film presents events that have actually occurred and how it promotes specific readings with reference to history, myth and narrative. The analysis also sparks questions about the types of messages that are communicated through the film about conflict in Africa.

<em>Re-Membering the Tutsi Genocide in</em> Hotel Rwanda <em>(2004):</em> Implications for Peace and Reconciliation

This article examines how Hotel Rwanda participates in memory construction and the challenges of adapting Rwandan genocide history to the screen through individual memory. I use contemporary literaturelfilm adaptation theories, especially, transtextuality as articulated by film scholars Thomas Leitch and Kamilla Elliot, to evaluate the based on a true story trademark of the film to establish its truth claims, as well as the intertextual collage between the film and Rusesabagina's (auto)biography, An Ordinary Man: The True Story behind Hotel Rwanda (2007). The article examines the validity of Rusesabagina's claims against testimonies of Mille Collines survivors in order to establish the role of artistic license in memory construction and its impact on truth. Finally, I examine the political controversies surrounding the film and conclude that in spite of its powerful creation of awareness about the Tutsi genocide, Hotel Rwanda contributes to postgenocide conflict and even undermines justice, peace, and reconciliation.

Le Genocide Rwandais de 1994: Une Etude sur les Implications du Conflit Franco-Américain pour L’intervention Humanitaire (The Rwandan Genocide of 1994: A Study of the Effects of Franco-American Competition in Francophone Africa)

Le conflit diplomatique franco-americain qui s’est declare pendant le genocide au Rwanda en 1994 a ete le resultat des politiques opposees de Washington et Paris vis-avis du pays des mille collines. Des les premiers signes du genocide, les Etats-Unis ont ete confrontes au paradoxe d’intervention : s’interposer en ayant peu a y gagner et au risque de tout perdre. Ce pays africain etant d’un interet strategique, politique ou economique limite pour les Etats-Unis, Washington decida d’eviter le conflit en retardant le deploiement d’une force militaire. De son cote, Paris, qui avait developpe une relation etroite avec le gouvernement hutu du Rwanda, n’a pas pu se degager d’une politique corrompue, meme apres le declenchement du genocide. Ainsi, ces deux pays occidentaux agissaient au Rwanda selon des politiques contradictoires, au detriment de presque un million de Tutsis massacres. The diplomatic conflict that arose between France and the United States during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 resulted from the two nations’ conflicting policies toward Rwanda. From the very first signs of genocide, the United States was confronted with a difficult choice: intervene with little to gain and at the risk of losing everything. The small landlocked country situated in the Great Lakes region of east-central Africa was of little strategic, political, or economic interest to the United States. And so Washington decided to avoid the conflict by delaying deployment of its military force to the region. On the other side of the Atlantic, France had developed a close relationship with the Hutu-led Rwandan government. Thus ensnared in a corrupt foreign policy vis-a-vis the Rwandan leadership, Paris would not disengage from its existing policy even after the start of the genocide. These two nations thus followed contradictory policies, to the great detriment of nearly one million Tutsis. My thesis defines an international, and more specifically, Franco-American, framework for analyzing the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the corresponding failure of the global community. While the political and cultural clash between France and the United States could be said to stretch back to the 19th century, my discussion centers on the heightened level of competition between the two countries in the African context during the 1990s. During the Cold War, American foreign policy toward francophone Africa was complementary to that of the French government. Preoccupied by an ideological struggle to contain the Soviet Union’s influence, the United States supported France’s cultural and economic monopoly over certain developing countries, especially in francophone Africa. After the end of the Cold War, the two countries became less interdependent. France still based its foreign policy toward former colonies on its historic economic and cultural ties with the region, while the United States pushed for economic liberalization and democratization in accordance with the “Washington Consensus.” Given the close economic relationship between France and francophone Africa, Washington’s increasingly aggressive stance on economic liberalization put France on the defensive, thus renewing tensions between the two countries. The tragic events of 1994 are set forth as striking evidence of a transitioning global geopolitical structure and the disastrous effects of two nations’ failure to find common ground in a humanitarian crisis. My objective is to deconstruct the Rwandan genocide in order to demonstrate to what extent the disagreement between the United States and France prevented other countries from responding reasonably to the crisis. I first consider the essential elements of French policy toward francophone Africa and the implications of this policy for the Franco-American relationship over the course of the Cold War. I then examine traditional US policy toward the region and how it changed from 1989 to 1994. I dedicate one chapter to depicting the violence that erupted on April 6, 1994 and the ensuing months. My analysis proceeds by way of examining Rwanda’s historical context since the beginning of the colonial period, underlining in particular the country’s integration in the international system and resulting Hutu leadership. I then discuss the Franco-Rwandan connection prior to and during the genocide and the US reaction to the genocide. I do not attempt to respond to the most difficult questions such as: Who is responsible for the genocide? Was the genocide avoidable? I assume that the Rwandan genocide constitutes an avoidable conflict given an appropriate international humanitarian response. My analysis aims instead to situate the events of 1994 in an international context, at a time of global transition when the policies of the United States and France in Africa were at odds.

Violence, hate speech and inflammatory broadcasting in Kenya: The problems of definition and identification

During and after the 2007/8 post-election violence in Kenya, media monitors, human rights groups, politicians and journalists accused sections of the Kenyan media - notably local vernacular radio stations - of broadcasting messages of hate and inciting ethnic hatred and violence. Some observers went so far as to suggest that certain radio stations had acted like the infamous Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) in Rwanda, during the 1994 genocide. This article looks at the context of the violence, the inflammatory and at times violent nature of political discourse in Kenya, the role in that discourse of vernacular radio stations, and the ways in which we identify and define hate broadcasting and propaganda. The behaviour of the stations is viewed in the context of Kenya's political environment, language of political discourse, and media structure and history.

Film representations of the Rwandan genocide

In 1994 Rwanda experienced a devastating genocide in which nearly a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed by Hutu extremists. Written scholarly works explain the Rwandan genocide in historical terms. Academic work on media and the genocide tend to emphasise the role played by Radio-Television Libre Des Mille Collines (RTLM) and the newspaper Kangura in instigating the Rwandan genocide. A steady output of literature on the depiction of the genocide in film is emerging but it is fragmentary, and appears in journals that are not easily accessible. The little material research on the Rwandan genocide film does not pay sufficient attention to the stereotyped language of film and how these manifest themselves through verbal, visual, sound, colour and silence aspects which constitute the semiotic system of film. This article, therefore, explores how the Rwandan genocide is represented through the documentary films A good man in hell (2002) and Keepers of memory (2004), and the feature films Hotel Rwanda (2004) and Sometimes in April (2005). These films have been sampled first because they all focus on the Rwandan genocide; second because the films purport to approach the subject of the genocide from different perspectives. Film is an important medium for socialisation.

After the hate media

During the past 15 years Central Africa, and specifically Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, have been through devastating wars in which the media became actors. In 1993, some Burundese newspapers were described as ‘hate media’ and one year later Radio télévision mille collines (RTLM) in Rwanda became the first of those described as ‘death media’, preparing minds for genocide and helping in its implementation. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, in1998, certain newspapers took to inciting ethnic hatred and violence towards some Congolese citizens. By 2006, when this research was completed, these three countries were undergoing fragile peace processes and trying to rebuild themsleves. The media certainly have a major role to play in helping to soothe the hatred and move people from different communities back into dialogue. But how should the media sector be reorganized in countries where the media have contributed to killings? What is the best way to find a balance between freedom and control in a context where the microphone and the pen have been weapons of murder? This is one of the main issues that must be addressed by the communications regulatory bodies which have been established to support press freedom and to organize and monitor the media landscape.

An Ordinary Man

An Ordinary Man

An Ordinary Manby Paul Rusesabagina and Tom Zoellner. New York, Viking Adult, 2006, 288 pp., $23.95.

An Ordinary Manby Paul Rusesabagina and Tom Zoellner. New York, Viking Adult, 2006, 288 pp., $23.95.

Modeling Globalization from the Bottom Up: A Review Essay of John Braithwaite and Peter Drahos, Global Business Regulation

Modeling Globalization from the Bottom Up: A Review Essay of John Braithwaite and Peter Drahos, Global Business Regulation John Braithwaite and Peter Drahos, Global Business Regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 704 pages. $100.00 cloth; $37.99 paper. Here is one picture of globalization: in the film Hotel Rwanda (2004), Paul Rusesabagina, entrusted with the protection of a thousand refugees who have taken sanctuary in the Hotel Mille Collines, must stave off the Hutu militia that seek to exterminate the Tutsi cockroaches. Belgian francs, European liquor, and fashionable jewelry provide the currency to purchase the lives of the condemned Rwandans. Reminders from Rusesabagina to the generals that the Belgians would not like their property to be destroyed restrain the Hutu militia from damaging the hotel and its inhabitants. At one point, when the Hutus demand immediate abandonment of the hotel and the releases of the refugees to their slaughter, Rusesabagina quickly calls the CEO of Sabena, the Belgian airline that owns the hotel, and describes the impending purge. A quick phone call from the CEO to the Ministry of Defense in France results in diverting the Hutu troops and sparing the Tutsis at the Hotel Mille Collines for another day (Gourevitch 1998:132-44). Human lives turned into fungible commodities, former colonial outposts as center stage for violent drama, transnational business entities sparking and mediating ethnic vendettas-these are just some of the hallmarks of globalization. Surprising is the role of one man who seems to orchestrate all of these elements in order to save his fellow countrymen. The story of Rusesabagina is as much about the possibilities of globalization as well as its excesses. Almost mystically, the disease becomes the cure as the modest hotel manager plays the various shards of the globalized world against each other in order to ensure escape from local tribalism and into the unmapped promised land beyond. Braithwaite and Drahos's study of global business regulation is also about the possibilities of globalization. Although their work is narrowly focused on the regulation of business and economic activities, the authors present a tableau of globalization that exposes its logic and provides a blueprint for its management. For those who have lost hope about human agency and individual self-determination as oppositional to multinational corporations and superpower (read U.S.) excesses, Braithwaite and Drahos redefine the human agent in the modern world. Self-consciously opposed to big theories (read Marxism), the social scientist and the law professor remap the history of the commercial world from Roman times to the post-Bretton Woods era to demonstrate the place for consumer activism that restrains concentrated economic and political power. The book is dedicated to Esther Peterson, labor organizer, consumer activist, former Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Kennedy, and Vice-President for Consumer Affairs at Giant Food, Inc. From her varied roles on the ground and in the boardroom, Peterson is the type of leader Braithwaite and Drahos seek to breed through their nearly 700-page tome. Global Business Regulation, with all its theoretical rigor, is basically an empirical book. Regulation is understood through detailed conversations with regulators and the regulated, at both the micro level of corporate boardrooms and the macro level of the nationstate. The authors conclude, evoking a perhaps surprising source: Like Adam Smith (1776), our empirical findings are that purposive conspiracies by business actors with the resources to enact change are common in shaping regulatory change globally. Equally, we find that purposive model mongering by NGO's to exploit fissures between powerful states and corporations can also shape global change, but against the odds. (p. 601) Put simply, the Invisible Hand in the globalized world has a discernible outline and form whose actions can be consciously traced through the hallways of the powerful and the back alleys of the preterite. …

The Role of Radio in the Rwandan Genocide

We examine and interpret the role of the government-controlled Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which involved mass killings both of and by civilians. We consider the historical and political context of the genocide and analyze excerpts from RTLM radio broadcasts and observational accounts, and we interpret, via several strands of communication scholarship related to collective reaction effects and dependency theory, the role played by radio in inciting the genocide.

The Mille Collines and Kigali at War

As the tragic events of Rwanda started unfolding on April 6, 1994, I was in Kigali setting up a Postwar Rehabilitation and Development Program we had developed in collaboration with the Rwandan Ministries of Health and Defense, and ORTPN (the Rwandan Office of Tourism and National Parks). This program, implemented by a local NGO, included four components. The first consisted in the physical rehabilitation of institutions damaged in the war between October 1990 and March 1993, primarily hospitals, health centers and dispensaries in the Prefectures of Byumba and Ruhengeri. The first phase of this component had been completed by March 25, 1994, with funding from the Canadian Government and the EEC. Subsequent phases were intended to be program-oriented and to provide institutional support to these health facilities.

The Mille Collines and Kigali at War

The Mille Collines and Kigali at War

The Mille Collines and Kigali at War

As the tragic events of Rwanda started unfolding on April 6, 1994, I was in Kigali setting up a Postwar Rehabilitation and Development Program we had developed in collaboration with the Rwandan Ministries of Health and Defense, and ORTPN (the Rwandan Office of Tourism and National Parks). This program, implemented by a local NGO, included four components. The first consisted in the physical rehabilitation of institutions damaged in the war between October 1990 and March 1993, primarily hospitals, health centers and dispensaries in the Prefectures of Byumba and Ruhengeri. The first phase of this component had been completed by March 25, 1994, with funding from the Canadian Government and the EEC. Subsequent phases were intended to be program-oriented and to provide institutional support to these health facilities.

Politique Africaine de la France: arrêtons le massacre

The Rwandese genocide dramatically reveals the senseless nature of French policy in Africa-determined by personal relationships, speculation, and corruption. As the "reserved domain" of the French President for the past 35 years, French policy on the African continent has been dominated by personal relationships between the French President and his African counterparts, the military lobby, the francophone lobby (Fachoda Syndrome), and some French enterprises (EL Bouygues, Bolloré), all of which have escaped from an democratic control. Hence in Rwanda, France armed, financed, and trained a regime that exhibited Nazi-like features with its guard presidential, militia, hatred ropaganda (Radio Mille Collines), pogroms throughout 1992, and finally the genocide of April 1994. Since the coming into power of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF)-perceived as pro-Anglo- Saxon because of its link with Uganda-France has multiplied its efforts to fill the (pro-French) vacuum left in the region, by calling upon the Zairean dictator Mobutu to "stabilize" the region, and by selling the usual military "package" (arms and training) to the Sudanese regime. [The author is calling upon] the French population and the international community to mobilize against the present French policy in Africa, and identifies three French organizations that are currently lobbying for a human, pro-democratic and non-secretive French policy in Africa.

Death by radio

If Rwandan crimes against humanity ever come to trial, the owners of Radio des Mille Collines will stand at the head of the accused