

Call to genocide: radio in Rwanda - b-man
http://www.idrc.ca/rwandagenocide/ev-108178-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

======
furyg3
Nowadays it's being used for good there, as well:

[http://www.labenevolencija.org/en/current-
activities/great-l...](http://www.labenevolencija.org/en/current-
activities/great-lakes-reconciliation-radio/projects/rwanda/programs-
activities/soap.html)

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
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.

------
kierank
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
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.

~~~
kierank
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.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
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
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.

------
patio11
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.)

~~~
cwan
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
[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.

~~~
cwan
Other starting points for you to read: \-
<http://www.afrol.com/articles/16082> \- [http://www.africa-
confidential.com/article-preview/id/509/No...](http://www.africa-
confidential.com/article-preview/id/509/No-Title) \-
[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/mitterrand-legacy-
under...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/mitterrand-legacy-under-heavy-
scrutiny/story-e6frg6to-1111117156815) \-
[http://crinfo.beyondintractability.org/case_studies/rwandan_...](http://crinfo.beyondintractability.org/case_studies/rwandan_genocide.jsp?nid=6815)

Perhaps "conspiracy theory" was a poor choice of words since they're not so
much theories. The approach of divide and conquer had long been used in Africa
to manage populations within colonies. Further, the identity cards that marked
large "H" and "T"'s to denote Hutu's and Tutsi's were both used and encouraged
despite intermarriage between the two groups being "frequent" as documented by
the UNHCR
([http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic,463af2212,469f2d0c2,3df4...](http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic,463af2212,469f2d0c2,3df4bea50,0.html))

I note further that it is no secret that French colonies have significantly
lower economic growth than their British counterparts: <http://faculty-
staff.ou.edu/G/Robin.M.Grier-1/religion.pdf> (pdf). Africa in general has
faced a number of difficulties - but even within Africa there are some much
better examples of governance than others and in almost each (if not all) of
those cases, those examples were not French colonies (there's a TED
presentation by Hans Rosling if I recall, that speaks to economic
growth/poverty in Africa)

