Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

RADIO-TÉLÉVISION LIBRE DES MILLE COLLINES
354
the grounds of cost and logistics, though vague questions of international law were also
raised. An argument was even put forth that the U.S. commitment to freedom of speech
(via the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution) would render radio jamming against
the Rwandan killers a contravention of the U.S. Constitution. Also, a moral issue arose
regarding the potential charge of hypocrisy at the United States jamming a foreign radio
network while complaining about U.S. radio being jammed by other countries. Ultimately,
radio jamming technology was not tried as a strategy to help stop the killing in Rwanda,
thus resulting in another instance of an untried policy option that could have possibly
saved lives. The only options given any chance of working were those requiring military
intervention—something the United States, and seemingly, the United Nations, was never
prepared to countenance.
Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM). RTLM was an independent radio
station in Rwanda that broadcast from July 8, 1993, until it was shut down by the advance
of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) troops on Rwanda’s capital city, Kigali, on July 3,
1994. It kept broadcasting illicitly until July 31, employing mobile transmitters. It became
a primary instrument in the preparation and execution of the genocide of the Tutsi population
and moderate Hutu that was perpetrated during the one hundred days that followed
April 6, 1994. RTLM, whose initial letters translate from the French for “Thousand
Hills Free Radio and Television,” was established as Rwanda’s first nongovernmental radio
station through the Akazu, the clique of family members and friends of Rwandan president
Juvenal Habyarimana (1937–1994). A Belgian journalist, Georges Ruggiu (b. 1957),
was hired as a leading presenter on RTLM, which had a greater degree of freedom in
spreading its anti-Tutsi message than did the state broadcaster, Radio Rwanda. Ultimately,
RTLM was considered to be a radio version of the rabidly anti-Tutsi newspaper Kangura,
a paper edited by Hassan Ngeze (b. 1961), who became a shareholder and correspondent
with RTLM.
Months prior to the outbreak of violence in April 1994, RTLM was broadcasting a carefully
prepared daily regimen aimed at demonizing the Tutsi minority before its Hutu audience.
Day by day the rhetoric escalated as a vocabulary of genocide was introduced, and
verbal and mental images of Tutsi as “cockroaches” (Inyenzi) intensified the emotional
content of the hate programs broadcast. Virtually every home in Rwanda had a radio,
allowing radicals both in and outside the government to reach into every corner of the
land and inflame the Hutu against their Tutsi neighbors and moderate Hutu. The campaign
lay at the heart of the wide grassroots response to the call to participate in the orgy
of violence that engulfed the country.
The total absence of any counterpropaganda added to the effectiveness of the RTLM
media broadcasts. Some states within the international community, particularly the
United States, contemplated destroying the central antenna of RTLM or jamming the
radio broadcasts, but nothing concrete came out of the high-level discussions that
ruled on such initiatives. A major concern of those arguing this case was that jamming
any radio station, regardless of its message, was tantamount to a suppression of freedom
of speech. Not even the breaking news of renewed massacres altered the minds of
policy strategists in the West. The voices of hatred broadcast uninterruptedly throughout
the three months of genocide, fueling the frenzied killing by broadcasting to a
nationwide audience the location of Tutsi and Tutsi sympathizers, with the command
that all the Tutsi be murdered immediately.