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This is how Rwandan local radio incited the Hutus to violence (an act against international law):
'You have to kill the Tutsis, they're cockroaches.'
'All those who are listening, rise so we can fight for our Rwanda. Fight with the weapons you have at your disposal: those who have arrows, with arrows, those who have spears, with spears. We must all fight.'
'We must all fight the Tutsis. We must finish with them, exterminate them, sweep them from the whole country. There must be no refuge for them.'
'They must be exterminated. There is no other way.'
Does hearing instructions via the media make them harder to ignore?
This is how a war correspondent saw the Rwandan genocide in retrospect: 'Scratch below the surface of this genocide and you will find not a simple issue of tribal hatreds but a complex web of politics, economics, history, psychology, and a struggle for identity. What happened in Rwanda was the result of cynical manipulation by powerful political and military leaders. Faced with the choice of sharing their power with the Rwandan Patriotic Front, they chose to vilify the RPF's main support group, the Tutsis. The authorities told the Hutus that the Tutsis planned to take their land. They summoned up memories of the colonial days when the Tutsi overlordship had guaranteed second-class citizenship for the Hutus. "Remember your shame. Remember how they humiliated us. Be proud of your Hutu blood." Intellectuals were recruited into the cause of creating a pan-Hutu consciousness, and they travelled the country spreading the propaganda of hate. "Mercy is a sign of weakness. Show them any mercy and they will make slaves of you again." There were powerful echoes of Hitler's Germany and the demonisation of the Jews....What kind of man can kill a child? A man not born to hate but who has learned hatred. A man like you or me.'
What do you think?
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