The echo of the Radio des Milles Collines still haunts Rwanda a decade after a million people died at the hands of Hutu mass murderers inflamed by its broadcasts.
It has taken 10 years for Rwandan authorities to allow another private radio station to take to the airwaves. Radio 10 started broadcasting on Saturday, a few weeks before the commemoration of the genocide.
Since the genocide, the government has allowed only state-owned radio and television, and one weekly independent newspaper, evoking the memory of the Radio des Milles Collines (RTLM) as the reason for this restriction.
Between 1993 and 1994, RTLM — an ostensibly private radio station but led by the most radical extremists in the Hutu-led regime at the time — incited people to kill the Tutsi minority.
Two of the station’s former directors were sentenced respectively to life and to 35 years in prison in December by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Eugene Nyagahene, the owner of Radio 10, a general news and entertainment broadcaster, said the decision to allow a new private station had been too long in coming.
”The Rwandans are sufficiently grown up not to repeat the same mistakes,” he said.
”The government should have authorised private radio stations at least five years ago.”
Information Minister Laurent Nkusi said at the time of the verdict against the former RTLM directors that the ”weight of history” had influenced the government in its decision not to allow independent broadcasting until now.
He said the government would make sure that new private media outlets did not stir up unrest or discord among the population.
Several human rights organisations, however, say that the government wields control not only to ensure the media does not again stir up ethnic hatred but also to suppress criticism of the regime.
For most observers, the launch of Radio 10 and, in coming weeks, of six other private radio stations, is a positive signal as long as the broadcasters are truly independent of the government.
”We have cause to hope at last, but in reality these radio stations must be allowed to start a debate, and touch on all topics, including political ones,” said Florien Uzikemwabo, the executive secretary of the Rwandan league for the promotion and defence of human rights.
He added that government authorities ought to relax their control on Rwanda’s only independent newspaper, Umuseso, a weekly in the national Kinyarwanda language.
Journalists at Umuseso have been arrested several times for fomenting ethnic division, a serious charge in Rwanda.
Contrary to what he said before opening Radio 10, Nyagahene now says his reporters will cover all subjects, including political ones, ”without restrictions,” unlike state-owned Radio Rwanda, which only broadcasts news about the government.
Saying it was not normal for Radio Rwanda to be the country’s only broadcaster, Nyagahene promised that Radio 10 would privide ”a new look on Rwandan society”. – Sapa-AFP