| Enjoying
the joint benefits of high-level sponsorship and freedom from restraint
burdening official channels, RTLM occupies much the same niche of privilege
as Kangura magazine,
with which it is closely intertwined. Belgian-born announcer Georges Ruggiu
will later testify at Arusha that "the relationship between RTLM
and Kangura is symbiotic. RTLM receives money from Kangura
for advertising, and Kangura promotes RTLM in its broadcasts";
while Félicien Kabuga, the magazine’s chief financier, serves
as president of the station’s board of directors. Of RTLM’s
50 founding members, 40 are Hutu from the north of Rwanda—most employed
by or related to Habyarimana himself, who is the station’s largest
shareholder. Often described as the 'ideologue' behind RTLM, historian
Ferdinand Nahimana heads the Rwandan Information Service (ORINFOR) responsible
for Radio Rwanda until his dismissal in April 1992 over increasingly violent
politics incompatible with the agenda of the multiparty power-sharing
agreement. Kabuga, Habyarimana’s son-in-law, is a prominent industrialist
whose trade in the days before the genocide includes the large-scale import
of Chinese machetes. Pop singer Simon Bikindi is an appointee to the government’s
Ministry of Youth. Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza is a senior official in the
Hutu Power party Coalition for the Defense of the Republic (CDR) charged
with distribution of weapons to the party’s youth militia, the Impuzamugambi.
Powerful officials and state resources lend an air of governmental sanction,
though the station was founded specifically to do that which was forbidden
to official parties. Its facilities are powered from generators within
the presidential compound, its programs broadcast from the Radio Rwanda’s
transmitters. To enhance the appearance of institutional legitimacy, RTLM
broadcasts at the same frequency as the government channel during morning
hours when official programming is off the air. Many of the announcers
and commentators employed by the station are well-known personalities
from Radio Rwanda. In contrast, the dull bureaucratic tone of that station
is abandoned for a riotous blend of Zairean pop music, call-in shows hosted
by flamboyant personalities, announcers announcing while boisterously
drunk. RTLM attracts listeners nationwide by promising—and delivering—something
never heard on the radio before. |
If
the exact affiliation of RTLM is not quite clear to listeners, its
objective is unmistakable. In the stark words of a sample broadcast,
the Tutsi "deserve to die". |
Through
the months leading up to the April 6 explosion of violence, RTLM
broadcasts reinforce a consciousness of Hutu unity and of the
need for extermination of the Tutsi. One popular Simon Bikindi
song is titled "Bene Sebahinzi" ("The Descendants
of Sebahinzi", who in Rwandan tradition is the ‘Father
of the Cultivators’). Lyrics hark back to a colonial past
when Hutu, in their traditional role as farmers, suffered under
Tutsi domination: "The servitude, the whip, the lash, the
forced work that exhausted the people: that has disappeared forever.
You, the great majority, pay attention and, descendants of Sebahinzi,
remember this evil that should be driven as far away as possible,
so that it never returns to Rwanda." The rewards of the 1959
revolution which brought the Hutu to power must be protected by
"we who have benefited from it". To Bikindi’s
audience these gains would be understood to include not only freedom
and access to political power, but also land confiscated from
exiled Tutsi. In the context of renewed Tutsi participation in
a coalition government, and of the RPF ‘return to Rwanda’,
the song evokes for Hutu listeners both the explicit fear of a
return to subservience, and an unstated fear of displacement should
their property be reclaimed.* Popular radio personality Kantano
Habimana skillfully exploits this same historical division between
the ethnicities in a vignette recalling the Tutsis’ traditional
association with cattle herding and dairy production. "Some
[Tutsi] were drinking milk because they simply had a sense of
nostalgia for it... Someone wrote to me: 'Please, help! They are
taking all the milk out of the dairy!’" His reference
to Tutsi "nostalgia" for milk attributes a yearning
for the days when they enjoyed social superiority; the specter
of a milk shortage instills fear of their rapacious consumption
of Rwanda’s resources. Just as when exiled Tutsi were denied
the right to return to their homeland, the rhetoric insists that
there is not enough land, enough food, enough living space for
all. These claims of competition create a climate of fear, wherein
Hutu are persuaded that a campaign to eliminate the Tutsi is merely
an instinctual act of self-preservation. The term ‘inyenzi’
encapsulates this portrait of an interloping force said to have
infiltrated the Rwandan household with devastating effect disproportionate
to their small size. In December 1993, Habimana asserts on air
that the Tutsi "have all the money and the riches, even if
they say that we treat them unequally." With the optimism
of the majority, he asserts, "We will fight them and we will
vanquish them, this is more than certain, all doubt is impossible
and if they don’t watch out they will be exterminated...
They are a clique representing only a small percentage of the
population". Speeches such as these position the Tutsi, like
the cockroach, in illegitimate possession of more than their fair
share—indeed, challenge their claim to any share within
Rwanda at all.
|
|
| *Why
would Simon Bikindi title a song "I Hate These Hutus" ("Nanga
Abahutu")? Read the lyrics
and find out |
Indeed,
in a plea agreement at the tribunal, Georges Ruggiu will state
that RTLM managers expressly prohibited the use of the word ‘Tutsi’
on the air, instructing announcers to substitute ‘inyenzi’
and ‘inkotanyi’ instead. The use of the term ‘inkotanyi’,
a traditional military term, personalizes the struggle and makes
more immediate, more urgent their threat. If the Tutsi are inkotanyi
then they are warriors, they are the RPF, they are an armed force
who must be met with armed resistance to prevent them not only
from choking the vitality out of Rwanda but from taking the life
of individual Rwandans. Interviewer Gaspard Gahigi begins one
of RTLM’s earliest broadcasts with the assertion: "There
is no difference between the RPF and the inyenzi." No violence
can be unprovoked against an armed and organized opponent. Habimana
offers hope of victory while pointing the finger for instigating
violence squarely at the Tutsi: "Are these people going to
continue to kill themselves off, to engage in a suicidal battle
against the majority—won’t this truly be the end of
them?"
|
A
study conducted by Johns Hopkins University found that radio is
the primary medium by which Rwandans receive news and information.
|
|
|
Distinctions
have been repeatedly drawn, since the Nuremberg tribunal sat in
judgment on Nazi war crimes, between hate propaganda such as that
we’ve heard so far and direct, criminal incitement to violence.
But from RTLM broadcasts continuing throughout the genocide, there
can be no doubt that the station’s ultimate goal is not
to provide commentary or rhetoric, but to launch and to institutionalize
a campaign of extermination. As early as January 21, 1994, Kantano
Habimana boasts on air that he has met Tutsi children who admit
to being terrified of attack after listening to RTLM broadcasts.
"Stand up, take action," the station insists, "without
worrying about international opinion." Interim prime minister
of the provisional government Jean Kambanda declares RTLM an "indispensable
weapon in the fight against the enemy", as he uses its airtime
to urge the destruction of this enemy: those who ‘do not
share our opinion’.
|
|
On
April 7, 1994, the day after president Habyarimana’s death,
RTLM appeals to Rwandan Hutu to avenge him against the purported
Tutsi assassins. "The graves are not yet quite full. Who
is going to do the good work and help us to fill them completely?"
|
|
|
|
The
station broadcasts license plate numbers of cars carrying Tutsi
or the Hutu who are helping them, so that listeners can intercept
them.
|
|
United
Nations forces plan to evacuate Tutsi refugees from Kigali’s
Hôtel des Mille Collines, providing safe transport to the
RPF-controlled territories on 3 May 1994. RTLM reveals the plan
on air; the convoy is blocked by Interahamwe militia and sent
back to the hotel.
|
|
|
| |
In
one program, announcer Valérie Bemeriki provides the names
of thirteen people—along with their nicknames, their jobs
and their home addresses—and asks listeners to help in hunting
them down. |
|
On
June 18, Georges Ruggiu announces that Tutsis in Gitwe, in the
Mutara commune, have not yet been eliminated, and directs that
an attack begin and roadblocks be reinforced to prevent escape.
An Interahamwe squad arrives at Gitwe. Tutsi from more than 70
families are killed.
|
|
|
|
Death
tolls are reported like sports scores.
|
|
"And
these inkotanyi who used to call me, where have they gone? Ah,
they must surely have been exterminated... they must have been
exterminated... so let us sing! Let’s rejoice, friends!
The inkotanyi have been exterminated! Let’s rejoice, friends!
God is always just... these criminals...no doubt about it, they’ll
be exterminated... I've seen the corpses lying there in Nyamirambo...When
one observes carefully, one asks: These people here, what race
are they?"
( Nyamirambo
is an area south of Kigali with a large Tutsi population, to which
many more of the capital’s Tutsi flee for safety when the
violence first erupts. Dozens taking shelter in a church here
are killed on April 8. Days later, RTLM proclaims that hundreds
more Tutsi are hiding in a Nyamirambo mosque. They too are slaughtered.)
|
|
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|
"I
listened to RTLMC because if you were mentioned over the airways,
you were sure to be carted off a short time later by the Interahamwe,"
explains one Tutsi survivor. "You knew you had to change
your address at once."
|
|
Civil
servants and militia leaders broadcast requests for reinforcements
of weapons, ammunition, or grenades to continue the massacres
in a given area.
|
|
|
Witnesses
recall young men with a transistor radio in one hand and a machete
in the other, tracking down victims as the radio guides. |
Hassan
Ngeze of Kangura magazine warns in an RTLM interview
that Hutu stationed at roadblocks should use caution when selecting
victims. Rather than judging by physical appearance, attackers
should examine the captive’s official identity card to ascertain
ethnicity. If there should be any doubt, he advises, consult your
mayor or town councilors. When this excerpt is admitted into testimony
at the Arusha tribunal, Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch
explains the degree to which the state apparatus is complicit
in the genocide. "Here we see a clear directive, it is an
instruction… What he is saying is that if you cannot choose
the right victim you must go to the authority… this is aimed
at creating discipline in what was threatening to become a very
disorderly process." The government exploits deep-seated
ethnic prejudices to inspire popular participation in the genocide,
and consequently must remain vigilant to channel and to most effectively
employ the violence they have fomented.
|
|
Less
cautious, Habimana insists: "They should all stand up so
that we kill the inkotanyi and exterminate them. Look at the person's
height and his physical appearance. Just look at his small nose
and then break it." Laughter follows.
|
|
|
"The
swift RPF advance had the effect of causing large numbers of civilians
to take flight from the areas of combat, but this displacement
might well have been containable had not panic been caused by
deliberately inflammatory broadcasts from radio stations controlled
by elements of the former government." Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, UN Secretary General
|
As
the RPF makes territorial advances through Rwanda, the genocide’s
leaders take the strategic decision to evacuate—to escape
the onslaught and resume their efforts across the border. They
use RTLM to orchestrate this tactical withdrawal, creating enough
fear to motivate flight but not so much that the nation’s
Hutu abandon their genocidal quest. Throughout May and June, Rwandans
pour into Tanzania. After a week off the air, RTLM resumes once
mobile transmitters are secured; broadcasts from July 14 and 15
urge Hutus to take refuge in Zaire, and millions flood refugee
camps there. French relief organization International Action Against
Famine declares that the regrouped broadcast units are inspiring
"general hysteria among people who believe only in their
leaders, who have made devils out of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
People are scared out of their wits." Listeners are terrorized
into flight by reports of Tutsi atrocities: the soldiers are devils,
who kill ‘by extracting various organs... for example, by
taking the heart, the liver, the stomach...the cruelty of the
inyenzi is incurable, the cruelty of the inyenzi can only be cured
by their total extermination.’ Broadcasts allege only 5,000
survivors in the whole of the occupied territory. Alain Destexhe
reports that, as villages fall to the RPF, "peasants were
astonished that the Tutsi soldiers did not have horns, tails and
eyes that shone in the dark as they had been described in radio
programmes." RTLM describes the RPF onslaught as a final
attack on the Hutu, using the Kinyarwanda word ‘simusiga’—the
same word used by the world outside Hutu Power to describe the
anti-Tutsi genocide.
|
|
"But
too bad—let’s keep going. Let’s pull the cord
tight and exterminate them so that our children, our grandchildren
and the children of our grandchildren never hear the name inkotanyi!"
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