{The Rwandan government has suspended all BBC radio broadcasts in Rwanda’s most common language to protest against the news organization’s recent documentary about the 1994 genocide in the country.}
Government, members of parliament and genocide survivors have expressed their anger at the BBC over the recent documentary that suggested the country’s president may have had a hand shooting down his predecessor’s plane.
Its hour-long documentary, Rwanda, The Untold Story, also quoted US researchers who suggested that many of the more than 800,000 Rwandans who died in the 1994 genocide may have been ethnic Hutus and not ethnic Tutsis as the Rwandan government maintains.
Late on Friday, the Rwandan Utilities Regulatory Authority announced the suspension of the BBC’s broadcasts in the local language, Kinyarwanda. The board said it took the action because it has received complaints of “incitement, hatred, divisionism, genocide denial and revision” from the public. It said further action could be taken.
The BBC had defended the film on Friday, saying it had a “duty to investigate difficult and challenging subjects”.
Rwandan minister of foreign affairs Louise Mushikiwabo said the documentary was an “attack on Rwanda and its people” and that her government is contemplating taking action against the BBC.
Earlier this week the Rwandan parliament passed a resolution to ban the BBC and to lay charges against the journalists behind the documentary.
“What we are saying is that this gross denial of the genocide and disregarding facts to trivialize our history should not go unpunished,” the president of the senate, Bernard Makuza, told AP.
The Rwandan law-makers are demanding an apology from the BBC. University students also held a protest march against the documentary.
Rwanda accused the BBC of bringing together genocide revisionists in order to distort the facts about the mass killings.
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