Lessons from Rwanda: India needs stringent laws to hold media accountable

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Lessons from Rwanda: India needs stringent laws to hold media accountable

Several journalists from RTLM received heavy sentences for their role in the ’94 genocide

Friday April 10, 2020 12:16 PM, Syed Ali Mujtaba, ummid.com

Indian Media Coronavirus Coverage

In Rwanda close to a million Rwandan Tutsi and moderate Hutus were killed in a genocide that lasted the months of April to July of 1994. In this genocide, media played a big role in preparing, motivating, inciting and accelerating the violence against Tutsi tribe.

What first started with newspapers as a spillover from neighboring countries, radio transmitters had become the number one means of spreading hate speech by the time of the genocide took place.

Together with state newspaper Kangura and Radio Rwanda, broadcaster, Radio TélévisionLibre des Mille Collines (RTLM) managed to enlarge and exploit the already divided society due to a mostly artificial ethnic distinction, into the massacre intended to “exterminate” the Tutsi population.

The radio station RTLM, which had become popular among youth because of its pop music, did not only disseminate hate propaganda, it mobilized ordinary Hutu citizens to turn against their Tutsi neighbors, colleagues, friends and even their own family members.

The radio station gave the starting sign to kill “the cockroaches,” the term used to refer to Tutsi Rwandans. It even gave specific directions for carrying out the killings.

Several journalists from RTLM received heavy sentences for their role in the ’94 genocide. Three media leaders received life long sentences and up to 35 years in prison.

According to the prosecutor, without this radio station through which journalists incited hatred and gave exact locations of where Tutsis were hiding, the genocide would not have caused this many lives and would not have been able to spread as fast as it did.

The lesson learnt from Rwanda has shades of overtones in the recent media profiling of the Muslim community and targeting them by calling Corona Jihadist.

The Indian media tried to replicate exactly in the same way as Rwandan media did many years ago. They did not see the Markaz episode as act of some ignorant Muslims who held religious congregation in Delhi when global pandemic was knocking India's door. What the media did was it went on an over drive targeting Muslims and incited the Hindu community to develop deep hatred against the Muslims.

The Indian media stands exposed not doing their job of narrating the truth and with charade prevailing, attacking Muslims in the name of COVID-19.

It is because of media profiling of the Muslims that crime against this minority community surges across India. Some people from the Hindu community have taken the role to act like vigilantes and they are seen abusing Muslims, shutting their businesses and petty Muslim vendors with their carts to not enter into their locality to sell their goods.

The Indian media’s treatment of Muslims as its fodder in turn is exhausting the community mentally, psychologically and morally. By doing so, the Indian media makes a farce of itself as upholder of journalistic values.

The Rwanda case of Media and mass atrocities serves as a lesson to the entire journalist community world over to uphold the importance of the independence of press. It also cuts out the role of the journalists in monitoring the society from the spread of communal virus and protecting the weak and minority besides upholding freedom and democracy.

Indian media do not need regulation its needs reform towards accountability. India needs stringent law which can hold the media accountable.

[Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.com]

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