Media called to tackle genocide ideology

{The National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide (CNLG) has called on media practitioners to use their houses as a platform that should be used to fight against genocide ideology as it was a great weapon to spread it among Rwandans.}

Between 1990 and 1994, media were used as powerful weapon for politicians who spread genocide ideology and hatred leading to mass mobilization of Hutu to kill Tutsi.
Such acts were accomplished by private and government owned media operating in the country at the time where they used defamatory and pejorative words demeaning one race.

This was revealed on Thursday when the Ministry of Local Government staff visited Kigali memorial.

The executive secretary of CNLG, Dr Jean Damascene Bizimana noted that media was used during genocide and stressed the need to use it to eradicate genocide ideology.

“Media is among tools mostly used during the 1994 genocide against Tutsi. That is why tools used during the genocide should be used to eradicate genocide ideology. So, media should be used to fight combat genocide ideology,” he said.

He pointed out examples of newspapers like Kangura, Imvaho, La Medaille Nyiramacibiri among others used to spread mass hatred within a short time.

Apart from print media, Dr Bizimana said, RTLM emerged as the first private radio which sought by all means to become popular but was later during the genocide used as a medium of airing songs encouraging people to kill others.

A census carried out by the ministry of local government in 2002 indicated that a total of 1,074,017 were killed during the 1994 genocide against Tutsi. The report indicates names of killed victims, where they were living, their ages and circumstances under which they were killed.