MEDIA, ETHNICITY & THE RWANDA GENOCIDE

The internal and external media both played significant roles in the 1994 Rwanda genocide. The use of the Rwandan media in propagating hate and coordinating violence was pivotal in the orchestration of the genocide, while the western media was important in facilitating international inaction. In both, ethnicity was used as an important tool: to indoctrinate division and polarize the Hutu and Tutsi populations in the pursuit of political goals; and, in the western media, to explain the genocide while leaving historical, political, and economic factors unaddressed.

Because ethnicity is seen to be the primary reason for the genocide, it is important to recognize the true causes and motivations. Rwanda's colonial past, the unstable economic climate, and the precarious peace accords after the civil war created the political tensions leading to the planning and execution of the genocide. These factors, in coodination with sociological and psychological dynamics, made the genocide possible.

Moreover, the ethnic identities manipulated by the genocidaires were contructed political identities rather than manifestations of natural divisions. Their historical, political, and constructed nature is important to address in order to further problematize the use of ethnicity as a tool and an explanation.

Through an analysis of the ways the interal and external media operated in relation to the genocide, we have also sought to address some of the questions that we encountered in our research. One of these was the role of international law - and what role it plays in protecting free speech as well as preventing the use of media in committing grave human rights abuses.