Hate speech in Rwanda: the road to genocide.

• Author: Schabas, William A.
• Position: Hate, Genocide and Human Rights Fifty Years Later: What Have We Learned? What Must We Do ?

The author outlines the steps leading to the Rwandan genocide, tracing the importance of hate speech, disseminated in print and by radio, in preparing Rwanda's "willing executioners". Action ought to have been taken much sooner than it was to prevent incitement to genocide, a crime under the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The author traces the drafting history of the convention, including opposition by the United States to the criminalization of direct and public incitement to genocide, motivated by concerns to protect freedom of the press. The author notes that other international instruments also contemplate prosecution for incitement. He discusses the judicial interpretation of the Genocide Convention and the meaning of "'direct" and "public". While the Genocide Convention criminalizes incitement to commit genocide, its blind spot is that it fails to address hate propaganda, a prior and important step in the genocidal food chain. Other instruments of international human rights law, however, have since filled the gap in the Genocide Convention. While the Genocide Convention was clearly intended to have two prongs, prevention and punishment, it says little about the former. This is regrettable, as the early stages of genocide consist of propaganda against the targeted group.

L'auteur presente un resume des etapes ayant mene au genocide rwandais. En ce faisant, il porte une attention particuliere au role de la propagande haineuse, disseminee par l'entremise de la radio et de diverses publications, dans la preparation des <> qui l'ont mene a bien. Il conclut que des actions visant a prevenir le genocide, qui constitue un crime au sens de la Convention pour la prevention et la repression du crime de genocide, auraient du etre prises bien plus tot. Les travaux preparatoires de la Convention revelent que, par exemple, la preoccupation par les Etats-Unis de proteger la liberte de presse a mene ce pays a s'opposer a la criminalisation de l'incitation publique et directe au genocide, alors que d'autres instruments juridiques internationaux prevoient la possibilite de poursuites pour incitation. L'auteur trace egalement les grandes lignes de l'interpretation judiciaire de la Convention, en particulier en ce qui concerne la signification des termes <> et <>. Bien que la Convention criminalise l'incitation au genocide, l'absence de mesures contre la propagande haineuse, une etape prealable et importante dans la chaine des evenements menant au genocide, constitue son point faible. Cette lacune a ete comblee par d'autres instruments internationaux relatifs aux droits de l'homme. Il reste toutefois que la Convention, qui devait a l'origine assurer a la fois la prevention et la repression du genocide, n'assure pas adequatement l'atteinte de ce premier objectif. C'est la une conclusion regrettable, car la premiere etape a franchir sur le chemin du genocide consiste en une propagande efficace a l'encontre du groupe vise.

Introduction

1. Preparing Rwanda's "Willing Executioners"

2. Application of the Genocide Convention

   1. Drafting History

   2. Incitement in Other Instruments

   3. Judicial Interpretation

   4. Meaning of "Direct" and "Public"

   5. The Genocide Convention's Blind Spot: Hate Propaganda

   Conclusion

   Introduction

   In January 1993 I participated in an international human rights fact-finding mission to Rwanda, organized by four prominent international non-governmental organizations ("NGO's"). We arrived in the midst of a civil war that had been going on sporadically since Tutsi refugees from Uganda invaded the country in October 1990. Our mission focussed on verifying widespread reports from national NGOs about atrocities perpetrated by the regime, crimes carried out mainly by the racist Interahamwe militia, which was directed by the ruling party. We arrived to find a country in a state of turmoil and agitation provoked by a speech suggesting that ethnic hatred had taken a new and genocidal turn. The orator was a confidante of the president named Leon Mugesera. One of our first stops in Kigali should have been a visit with the minister of justice. But he resigned out of frustration days before our arrival when he learned that Iris attempts to prosecute Mugesera for incitement to racial hatred were thwarted by the man's powerful friends.

   Three weeks later, with the fact-finding part of our mission concluded, we issued a preliminary statement citing acts of "genocide" in Rwanda and warning of the abyss into which the country was headed (1) Our report prompted a mission, in April of the same year, by United Nations special rapporteur Bacre Waly Ndiaye. Ndiaye confirmed the conclusions of our NGO fact-finding mission:

   The cases of intercommunal violence brought to the Special Rapporteur's attention indicate very clearly that the victims of the attacks, Tutsis in the overwhelming majority of cases, have been targeted solely because of their membership of a certain ethnic group, and for no other objective reason. Article II, paragraphs (a) and (b) [of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (2)], might therefore be considered to apply to these cases. (3) Our findings, couched in hesitant equivocation, like those of Ndiaye, were controversial and disturbing. Some of the sponsoring organizations of the mission had balked at the "g-word".

   Fifteen months later, history proved that our melancholy intuition about genocide had been well founded. (4) What was it about Rwanda in January 1993 that indicated to human rights experts, including the special rapporteur, that "genocide" was the appropriate characterization? We had seen convincing evidence of ethnic massacres, sometimes involving several hundred Tutsi victims, but alone this was hardly sufficient to constitute genocide. It is true that genocide, as defined in article II of the Genocide Convention, involves the destruction of a national, racial, ethnic, or religious group in whole or in part. There is no magic threshold past which ethnically motivated killing becomes genocide. The real test lies in the intent of the perpetrator. Mugesera's speech had brought us face to face with a genocidal intent. His call for destruction of Rwanda's Tutsi population was the decisive new element. Our January 1993 perception was hardly astute or clairvoyant. That genocide was in the air in Rwanda was plain for any objective observer to see.

   Mugesera himself did not commit genocide, although his speech sparked a series of atrocities directed against Tutsi in the Gisenyi region of the country. He left Rwanda more than a year before the killings of hundreds of thousands began. Mugesera's crime involved words alone. According to a decision of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, his remarks constituted direct and public incitement to commit genocide. (5) Mugesera's speech has also been cited in Prosecutor v. Akayesu, (6) a judgment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, as one of the defining moments in the buildup to genocide. (7) The road to genocide in Rwanda was paved with hate speech.

1. Preparing Rwanda's "Willing Executioners"

   From the time of independence in 1960 until the late 1980s, the Rwandan media were essentially run by the government, a single-party oligarchy since the late 1970s. (8) The media consisted of a national radio, Radio Rwanda, and two weekly newspapers, Imvaho and La Releve, all mediocre mouthpieces for the regime. In addition, organs of the powerful Catholic Church published two newspapers, Kinyamateka and Dialogue. In 1987 a more provocative and iconoclastic journalism emerged in the form of Kanguka ("Awake"), published by an individual close to President Juvenal Habyarimana and his family. Kanguka's success led more extremist elements to create a new publication. They took a similar name, Kangura, and assigned the direction of the newspaper to the Gisenyi correspondent of Kanguka, Hassan Ngeze. The forces behind Kangura were the akazu, a mafia from the northwest part of the country dominated by the brothers-in-law of the president.

   Kangura's first issues came out early in 1990, and consisted principally of attacks upon the rival Kanguka. Appearing more or less monthly, Kangura was to publish fifty-nine issues by March 1994. Although the quality of the publication, from a purely journalistic standpoint, was lamentable, it enjoyed enormous influence within the country. Professor Jean-Pierre Chretien et al. have described Kangura as "le chef de file de l'ideologie de l'integrisme hutu." (9) From the outbreak of the civil war, in October 1990, Kangura attacked the "the dominating spirit of extremist Tutsis" publishing lists of Tutsis in prominent positions within Parliament, public administration, and business to support its claims. In December 1990 Kangura issued the "Ten Commandments of the Hutu", Great Lakes Africa's answer to the notorious "Protocols of the Elders of Zion". The "Ten Commandments" described the Tutsi as "thirsty for blood and power, seeking to impose their hegemony over Rwanda by rifle and cannon" Tutsi were accused of using their two favourite weapons, "money and Tutsi women". Kangura warned that "every Hutu must know that Tutsi women, wherever they are, work for their own ethnic group. Consequently, a Hutu who marries or lives with a Tutsi woman, or who hires her as his secretary or assistant, was a traitor; every Hutu should know that Tutsis are dishonest in business, and seek only the supremacy of their ethnic group" Kangura's call for racial hatred was denounced, in February 1991, by the International Commission of Jurists. But when President Habyarimana was confronted on the subject, in April 1991, he defended Kangura's "freedom of expression".

   The Kangura model was emulated by other periodicals that began appearing in 1991. A new magazine, Umurava, was published under the direction of Janvier Afrika, with the complicity of the Habyarimana clique...