Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch Blog

• News source:
• 30 April 2012
• CBC

The selection of 12 bilingual jurors, from a pool of about 1,200, begins today in Ottawa in the war crimes trial of a man accused of participating in the mass genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

Jacques Mungwarere, 39, is the second Rwandan to be prosecuted under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, which was introduced in 2000 and allows for prosecution no matter where or when an alleged war crime may have been committed.

The first person prosecuted under the act is Desire Munyaneza, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2009.

• News source:
• 16 April 2012
• All Africa
• By Marie-Brigitte Kabalira

Given that the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsis took place on the basis of deep social divisions, justice and reconciliation were top priorities when the country emerged from the 100-day cataclysm. “Justice was the first thing that those who lost loved ones claimed,” explains Domitilla Mukantanganzwa, the executive secretary of the national jurisdiction of Gacaca courts.

• News source:
• 15 March 2012
• Business Week
• By Heather Murdock

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has been criticized by the U.S. government and advocacy groups for cracking down on civil liberties and trampling on human rights. Investors are more focused on how his policies have fostered one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice in November criticized Rwanda’s “closed” political culture. Harassment of civil-society activists, opposition figures and journalists as well as the disappearance of some of them pose the “next developmental challenge” for the country, she said. Her comments echoed similar statements by Amnesty International, the London-based rights group, last week.

• News source:
• 28 February 2012
• Institute for Security Studies
• By Naomi Kok

Rwanda’s traditional mechanism for resolving civil disputes; the Gacaca courts, will officially be closing on the 4th of May 2012. The Gacaca Courts have tried the bulk of Rwanda’s genocide related Rwanda’s traditional mechanism for resolving civil disputes; the Gacaca courts, will officially be closing on the 4th May 2012. The Gacaca Courts have tried the bulk of Rwanda’s genocide related cases. As of July 2012 the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)’s main body is also closing and will no longer hear any cases except for appeals, which are to be completed by 2014. These developments raise questions about what avenues will remain open for ordinary Rwandans who have not yet had their cases heard.

• News source:
• 23 January 2012
• Winnipeg Free Press
• By Sidhartha Banerjee

MONTREAL – A man accused of crimes related to the Rwanda genocide was deported back there Monday after losing a lengthy legal fight to stay in Canada.

• News source:
• 23 December 2011
• All Africa | Hirondelle News Agency (Lausanne)

ARUSHA — Government of Rwanda announced that it would officially hold an official closing ceremony for the semi-traditional courts known as Gacaca on May 4, 2012 according to information received by Hirondelle News Agency.

The new date was declared following a Cabinet meeting chaired by President Paul Kagame, indicated a government statement made available to Hirondelle on Thursday. The closure of Gacaca courts was first announced in 2007 but has been postponed several times due to what officials call complexity of certain cases and the discovery of new facts.

Gacaca trials began in 2005 in 106 pilot jurisdictions and were then extended to the rest of the country. They have now judged some 1.5 million people, according to the Rwandan government.

• News source:
• 8 December 2011
• UCDP

On 8 December, 2011, the UCDP released its latest addition to its vast number of datasets; the UCDP GED version 1.0-2011. The UCDP GED is an event-based and georeferenced dataset on organized violence, detailing all of the UCDP’s categories of violence (state-based conflict, non-state conflict and one-sided violence) in Africa between 1989 and 2010 at the level of the individual event of violence.

Also on 8 December, 2011, the UCDP released new data on external support in internal armed conflicts for the time period 1975-2009.

• News source:
• 7 December 2011
• Independent
• By Melanie Newman, Oliver Wright

A public relations firm whose senior management has close links to the Liberal Democrats [UK] said they had created an internet “attack site” for the government of Rwanda over accusations it had been involved in genocide.

Mark Pursey, head of BTP Advisers, was secretly recorded saying that the site was targeted at people who “over-criticised” over “who did what in the genocide”. A 2009 report from the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative said Rwanda’s “excellent public relations machinery” had succeeded in hiding “the exclusionary and repressive nature of the regime”.

Mr Pursey, who was the voluntary head of the Liberal Democrats’ National Media Intelligence Unit during the 2010 election, suggested his firm could create a similar site for the Uzbeks – who were in fact undercover reporters working for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Such a site, he added, could be “aggressive” in terms of putting across figures showing that things were “moving in the right direction”. Also at the meeting was Edward Lord, a member of the City of London Corporation, who attended at Mr Pursey’s request.

• News source:
• 11 September 2011
• VOA

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has begun a visit to France, striving to rebuild ties that were shattered by accusations related to Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

Mr. Kagame was scheduled to meet with Rwandan expatriates, French business leaders and French President Nicolas Sarkozy during his three-day visit.

• News source:
• 24 August 2011
• Aid Netherlands
• By Jason Abbott

With the war in Libya reaching its conclusion, it now looks as if Colonel Gaddafi will be the next authoritarian leader in North Africa to fall as a result the remarkable events dubbed the Arab Spring or Jasmine Revolutions. As I noted back in March many both within Asia and beyond have asked whether such ‘blossoming’ of dissent and revolt could occur in the authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes of Northeast, Southeast and Central Asia. This week the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville will host a workshop that will explore precisely that question. Entitled “The Jasmine Revolution and the ‘Bamboo’ Firewall: The impact of the Internet and new social media on political change in East Asia.”, the workshop will host 13 scholars from prestigious academic institutions and non-profit organizations around the country to participate and explore the potential impact of technology on democracy in Asia. Next week I hope to share some of the workshop’s findings with you, but for this week I am reposting the original blog entry from March…

• News source:
• 11 June 2011
• Independent (Uganda)
• By Magnus Mazimpaka

Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights group, is long accustomed to drawing controversy in Rwanda. Whether branding President Paul Kagame’s regime as dictatorial or highlighting purported press freedom abuses, the well known and respected organization is often derided by Rwandan government officials as biased and misleading.

Its new report, entitled, “Justice Compromised: The Legacy of Rwanda’s Community-Based Gacaca Courts,” [link added] has not only helped to cement this reputation amongst local officials, but has also drawn the suspicion of an international diplomat whose own country is known for being critical of the Kagame regime…

In her opening remarks, Leslie Haskell, researcher at the HRW Africa Division and author of the report, told reporters that Gacaca courts had truly achieved a lot, but also left a lot to be desired…

Gacaca courts, largely built on the Rwandan community philosophy of settling disputes through truth telling and forgiveness, were introduced in 2004 to reduce the backlog of genocide cases for approximately 130,000 suspects who were languishing in prisons as they waited for their trial.

Among other achievements, Haskell said Gacaca courts helped with “locating and identifying bodies of victims and a possible easing of ethnic tensions.”

However, Haskell also said that she found in “many cases that potential witnesses failed to speak out in defence of genocide suspects because they feared prosecution for perjury, complicity in genocide or ‘genocide ideology’,” a term the report alleges is a, “vaguely defined crime prohibiting ideas, statements, or conduct that might lead to ethnic tensions or violen

• News source:
• 21 May 2011
• Reporting on Conflict
• By Catherine Morris

Peacemakers Trust has added a new resource, RwandanStories to its list of educational and bibliographic resources on Rwanda. Rwandan Stories is a collection of video, photography and journalism that explore the origins, details and aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide through the eyes of both survivors and perpetrators. The site includes a wealth of educational curriculum materials. RwandanStories was developed as a collaboration among several Australians including filmaker Dave Fullerton, peace and reconciliation consultant John Steward, and educator Sally Morgan.

• News source:
• 3 March 2011
• Winnipeg Free Press
• By Tamsyn Burgmann, The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER – After his four sisters were butchered in the Rwandan genocide, Freddy Mutanguha’s only desire was to kill his enemies.

Nearly two decades after surviving the 100-day slaughter, the 34-year-old is now willing to hire his former foes into his workplace and even welcome them to move in next door.

It was a long, visceral and delicate healing process propelled by pointed government action, attendance at annual memorials and a resolute president who refused to allow revenge, Mutanguha said in an interview after speaking to a commission looking into Canada’s aboriginal residential schools.

“My case is the case of many thousands and thousands of people,” Mutanguha said. “This is how I can measure the progress.”

• News source:
• 14 January 2011
• France 24

The village school in Nyanza, south of the Rwandan capital of Kigali, is a place where former Rwandan soldiers can get off to a fresh start. Those who once knew only how to fire a gun are taught carpentry, weaving and masonry skills.

The Rwandan conflict sparked the mass killings of Tutsis [and moderate Hutus] that led to the genocide of 1994. It later spilled beyond the country’s borders into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), fueled by ethnic violence in North Kivu.

• News source:
• 12 January 2011
• Yes! Magazine
• By Sarah van Gelder, Brooke Jarvis

The media can choose to provoke the least stable, most trigger-happy sectors of the population. Or it can strengthen democracy, civility, and the rule of law.

• News source:
• 22 November 2010
• IPS
• By Chiara Magni

UNITED NATIONS – A review of modern human history finds no shortage of instances where hate speech has fuelled genocidal rampages against minority ethnic groups.

One of the most prominent is the case of Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), a Rwandan radio station that broadcast from Jul. 8, 1993 to Jul. 31, 1994. It is regarded as having played a crucial role during the April- July 1994 Rwandan genocide, spreading racist propaganda primarily against Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

A November 2009 study by David Yanagizawa of the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University estimated that the RTLM broadcasts explained an increase in violence amounting to 45,000 Tutsi deaths, about nine percent of the total.

“Speech alone cannot bring about genocide,” explains Susan Benesch, a human rights legal scholar who has been commissioned by the U.N. to develop policy guidelines on potentially dangerous speech, but it is “a catalyst to spread violence.”

• News source:
• 22 November 2010
• New Times (Rwanda) | All Africa
• By James Karuhanga

Kigali — The great lakes Parliamentary Forum On Peace Amani Forum – that concluded its two-day meeting in Kigali, over the weekend, added its voice to the growing doubts over the UN “Mapping Report” on DRC, further questioning the report’s objectivity and methodology and calling on the International body to reassess it.

• News source:
• 22 November 2010
• Guardian
• Video: Odette Kayirere talks about her work with Avega
• By Odette Kayirere

The organisation Avega has given widows of Rwanda’s genocide self-esteem, confidence and hope for the future, says Odette Kayirere.

• News source:
• 3 November 2010
• Globe and Mail
• By Sarah Hampson

“The rage I have is towards our ineptness and sense of irresponsibility to those who expect us to be in a leadership role.”

Roméo Dallaire, 64, lieutenant-general (retired), senator and author of a new book on child soldiers, They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children, is engaged in a battle – this one for the moral soul of Canada. “This country … is changing its fundamental philosophy towards humanity and values and moral standing. It has already happened,” he says slowly and gravely from his seat at the head of a boardroom table at his publisher’s downtown Toronto office.

• News source:
• 1 November 2010
• Ekklesia
• By Martin E. Marty

“Christians kill too” is the topic I wish to tackle as frightened and angry Americans keep raising the temperature of Islam-versus-Everyone-Else controversies.

In his new book Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda, Timothy Longman writes that in three months in 1994, more than one-tenth of the population of Rwanda was killed.

Longman notes, “Rwanda is an overwhelmingly Christian Country, with just under 90 per cent of the population in a 1991 census claiming membership in a Catholic, Protestant, or Seventh-Day Adventist Church.”