The shadow of the 1994 genocide still hangs over the Rwandan press, but a recent government announcement and the efforts of the Commonwealth Journalists Association could help rehabilitate the media’s image, writes Chris Cobb
I was in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, at the end of March 2011, for two reasons: to present a paper to the country’s first gathering of international media professionals, and to find a group of journalists willing and able to form the nucleus of the Rwandan branch of the Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA).
Rwanda controversially joined the Commonwealth in 2009. Controversial because the government of Paul Kagame hadn’t come close to meeting the basic Commonwealth membership requirements of freedom of expression and freedom of the press.
For better or worse, Rwanda is now part of the Commonwealth family, but its private news media remains impoverished and the country’s state media, while relatively well funded, is cautious. Both muzzle themselves with self-censorship and daily sycophantic coverage of the president and his ministers, with no consideration of how tedious this is for readers, listeners and viewers.
It’s an all too common model of daily journalism. But Rwanda’s problems aren’t typical and even the most aggressive advocate for press freedom will have limited success without understanding how journalism’s shameful role in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis by Hutus now obsessively defines the country.
Extremist newspaper and radio commentators actively encouraged Hutu participation in the 1994 genocide. In its 2003 verdict at the trial of executives from the private radio station RTLM and the newspaper Kangura, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was damning of the media for whipping up the majority Hutu population. It declared: “The newspaper and the radio explicitly and repeatedly… targeted the Tutsi population for destruction. Demonising the Tutsi as having inherently evil qualities, equating the ethnic group with ‘the enemy’ and portraying its women as seductive enemy agents, the media called for the extermination of the Tutsi ethnic group as a response to the political threat that they associated with Tutsi ethnicity.”
So it was against this complex background that we met, on 29-30 March, for a two-day symposium organised by the Commonwealth Secretariat at the request of the government in Kigali. The conference brought together mostly African journalists and journalism academics, with a few from more distant lands such as India, the Caribbean and, in my case, Canada. Papers covered the gambit of topics related to journalism and democracy.
The Rwandan government had a surprise up its sleeve: at the end of the symposium, Information Minister, Protais Muson, announced that Rwanda’s state-controlled broadcaster would be transformed into a public-service broadcaster and that news media in the private sector could become self-regulating. If the government is true to its word, this represents a minor revolution in the annals of African journalism.
My last few days in Kigali were spent working with journalists and section editors from the national newspaper, The New Times, whose acting managing editor, Collin Haba, had agreed to help organise the CJA branch, which looks like being one of our most vibrant.
The CJA will do its best, as it always does, to help develop journalism in Rwanda and shine a light on the abuses of journalists, should they occur, but a two-day symposium and an apparent revolutionary announcement from the government will not change the lot of Rwandan journalists in the short term, if at all. They need capacity, they need skills, they need ethical standards and, critically, they need to work for private media with solid business plans that include the provision of good, living wages for their journalists.
It would be naive to interpret the Kagame government’s apparent willingness to loosen its direct control on news media as an immediate cure-all or, indeed, a genuine effort at guaranteeing a free and independent media. But taken at face value, it’s a bold move and a challenge worthy of pursuing.
The Commonwealth Journalists Association
The Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA) was founded in 1978 by a group of reporters and editors attending a conference of non-governmental organisations at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. The launch had the support of the then Commonwealth Secretary General, Shridath Ramphal, as well as the Commonwealth Foundation.
Since 1983, the CJA has organised training courses for journalists in many Commonwealth countries across a variety of subjects, including basic reporting, environmental journalism, election coverage and financial analysis.
The CJA cooperates closely with other media bodies, such as the Commonwealth Press Union and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, in defending the independence and safety of journalists where these are seen to be under threat.
The association is also one of the bodies that founded the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.
British journalists Patrick Keatley and Derek Ingram were among the founding fathers of the Association. Ingram was elected first president in 1983 and was succeeded in 1990 by Ray Ekpu (Nigeria), followed by Murray Burt (Canada), who was elected in 1997 and 2001. The current president is Hassan Shahriar of Bangladesh. The executive director, Bryan Cantley, is based in Toronto, Canada.
The association has, in turn, been headquartered in London, Trinidad and Tobago, and now Toronto. The CJA is an association for individual journalists. As such, it will never be rich or all-powerful. Its strength comes from quiet work and moral influence in speaking for journalists and defending their interests
