My time in Rwanda is quickly coming to an end, but not without wrapping up my research on the coexistence of free speech and state stability in post-genocide Rwanda.
This Friday marked the final day of my internship with Rwanda's leading english daily, The New Times. For the past month, I have interned with the news team and covered a myriad of topics and events including, the Africa Day of Information, the training of top officials on nuclear security, and even a UN FAO treaty signing on genetically modified plants. One of the coolest assignments I had while on the job was shooting a short-documentary on two brothers who fought off their killers during the genocide.
Through the internship, I was able to fully understand the current state of the media in Rwanda and how journalists here conduct their work. This internship served as an integral part of my research as I was able to observe how the post-genocide environment journalists operate in is affecting their work.
One of the findings during this observation period was how the media has been an integral part of the healing and reconciliation process of Rwanda. The stories that are published in nearly all of the Rwandan newspapers are focused on topics of reconciliation between people and the overall development of the country. These stories, my colleagues at The New Times have told me, help fight genocide ideology and bring the people of Rwanda together as one people (instead of divisions in the ethnic groups like in the past).
The media was used during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi to broadcast kill lists and direct genocide perpetrators to where the Tutsi were hiding. Even before the genocide, the media spread hate ideology and established the Tutsi as an enemy of the state that was less than human. Because of this, many Rwandans still lack trust in the media of today.
For my research, to fully understand the extent to which the media played in influencing ordinarily good people to partake in crimes during the genocide, I interviewed four ex-TIG members. All four of the ex-TIG members who committed crimes during the genocide, said that the media played a crucial role in their decision to kill or commit other crimes during the genocide.
Since the media influenced people to commit atrocious crimes and genocide ideology is still a threat to Rwandan stability, the government has cracked down on any journalist or blogger who denounces or minimizes the genocide. To a westerner, like myself, this idea that people should be punished for speaking their mind is outrageous. But after conducting research on this topic for the past month, I do understand where the government is coming from when it limits free speech in this sense.
As I have wrapped up my interviews and observations for my research, I am now continuing to analyze my findings and draw conclusions on whether or not free speech and state stability can co-exist in post-genocide Rwanda. I hope that this research can show westerners that free speech is a luxury that can't exist everywhere and that things are not always as black and white as we may what them to be.