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RADIO, GENOCIDE, ANDHUMAN RIGHTS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM CAMBODIA, RWANDA, KOSOVO, AND BURUNDI
Presented by
Professor Frank Chalk
Department of History
and the
Montreal Institute for
Genocide and Human Rights Studies
Concordia University
16 June 2015
FOCUS WHAT LESSONS HAVE
WE LEARNED ABOUT THE USES OF RADIO FROM OUR PRACTICAL EXPERIENCES SINCE 1992?
HOW SHOULD THEY BE APPLIED IN BURUNDI TODAY?
CAMBODIA, 1992-1993
THE UNITED NATIONS TRANSITIONAL AUTHORITY FOR CAMBODIA (UNTAC)
TASKS ORGANIZE NATIONAL
ELECTIONS MAINTAIN SECURITY EDUCATE FOR
DEMOCRATIC DEBATE ENCOURAGE
GROWTH OF CIVIL SOCIETY
THE POLITICAL SITUATION CAMBODIA RUN BY
HUN SEN KHMER ROUGE BASED
ON THAI FRONTIER FROM 1979 TO 1990,
THE WEST AND CHINA AIDED THE KHMER ROUGE (KR)
ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN NATIONS (ASEAN) ALSO HELPED THE KR
1979-1993
Under President Jimmy Carter, the United States responded to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978-January 1979 by condemning Vietnam at the United Nations and voting to retain the Khmer Rouge delegation as the official representative of Democratic Kampuchea at the UN.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) demanded that Vietnam withdraw its troops from Cambodia.
1979-1993
Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and other ASEAN states, joined by China, Britain and the United States, furnished the Khmer Rouge with arms, military training, food, and medical aid.
The Khmer Rouge were allowed to dominate the Khmer refugee camps on the Cambodian-Thai border and were encouraged to use them as bases for attacks on the Vietnamese occupiers of Cambodia.
1979-1993
Western and ASEAN backing of the Khmer Rouge arose from:Insistence on the sanctity of bordersASEAN fear of Vietnamese, Soviet-backed expansionismAmerican bitterness over loss of the Vietnam warWestern determination to join China in the exploitation of South China Sea undersea oil deposits and China’s hostility to Vietnam
1979-1993
On 28 February 1992, the United Nations Security Council authorized the establishment of the U. N. Transition Authority for Cambodia (UNTAC)
The Party of Democratic Kampuchea, representing the Khmer Rouge, withdrew its cooperation later that year, and elections proceeded without its participation
1979-1993 UNTAC was staffed by 15,991
troops and 3,359 civilian police officers
362,209 Cambodian refugees were repatriated from Thailand into Cambodia
The election campaign began on 7 April 1993
UNTAC RADIO
ORGANIZED BY UNTAC “INFORMATION DEPT.”
HEADED BY TIMOTHY CARNEY, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
OPPOSED BY THE VOICE OF DEMOCRATIC KAMPUCHEA (VODK) (KR RADIO) BASED ON THE THAI BORDER
UNTAC RADIO STRATEGY
EMPHASIZE THAT BALLOTS SECRET
ENCOURAGE PEASANTS TO VOTE
BROADCAST NEWS WITHOUT DISTORTION
OFFER EQUAL RADIO TIME FREE TO ALL POLITICAL PARTIES
PLAY GOOD MUSIC AND ENTERTAIN
DISTRIBUTE TAPES TO DISTRICT ELECTORAL OFFICES
NEAR DISASTERS
TEMPTATION: BLOW UP KHMER ROUGE RADIO TRANSMITTER
VICTORY OF UNTAC OFFICIALS OPPOSED TO KNOCKING KR OFF THE AIR
ALLEGATIONS OF VIETNAMESE INFILTRATING UNTAC RADIO STAFF DISPROVED
UNTAC ELECTION RESULTS More than 4.2 million
votes were cast, representing 90 percent of the registered voters (23 to 29 May 1993)
FUNCINPEC defeated Hun Sen’s ruling party, the CPP
But Hun Sen used patronage, bribery, and the inexperience of the Opposition parties to remain in power
RWANDA, 1990-1994 Invasion of Rwanda from
Uganda by the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), Oct. 1990
International intervention resulted in two cease fire accords negotiated at Arusha, Tanzania in 1992 and 1994
Hate propaganda banned from Radio Rwanda, the Government station, and Radio Beacon, the RPF’s radio station
RTLM FORMED In the summer, 1993,
Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) was formed by business and government leaders close to President Habyarimana’s wife’s political circle, the Akazu (the Little House in Kinyarwanda)
RTLM featured Rwanda`s first broadcasts of talk radio, hot Zairois music, and telephone call-in shows
RTLM’S GOALS Attract the youth
audience to the Interhamwe militia
Disseminate anti-Tutsi hate propaganda
Broadcast disinformation Mirror the editorials in
low-circulation hate publications like Kangura for the largely illiterate masses of Rwanda
Undermine respect for the UN military force, UNAMIR
6 and 7 April 1994 Shooting down of Pres.
Habyarimana’s airplane as he returned from Arusha
Killings began at roadblocks around Rwanda’s capital, Kigali
RTLM broadcasters incited listeners to avenge the death of the President and to find and kill pro-human rights Hutu and Tutsi
On 7 April, RTLM said: “The graves are not yet quite full. Who is going to do the good work and help us fill them completely?”
Failures Western governments
refused to provide General Romeo Dallaire with the radio jamming equipment he requested (or to support an operation to blow up RTLM’s transmitter)
Neither the Rwanda Patriotic Front’s Radio Beacon nor Western broadcasters warned Tutsi that a genocide was underway and not to seek sanctuary in churches
Rationales for Inaction
Lawyers at the White House argued that jamming RTLM would violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and be too expensive
RPF officials opposed the broadcast of warnings which emphasized the separate identity of Tutsi as playing into the hands of the hate propagandists
Results and Aftermath At least 500,000-800,000
Tutsi and pro-human rights Hutu murdered between 6 April and early July 1994
After the genocide had ended, in February 1995, the UN initiated its own radio station in Rwanda, Radio MINUAR
Editors at the French-language service of the Voice of America denied that they could have known a genocide was underway
KOSOVO, 1998-1999
Early warnings of gross violations of human rights by Serb forces in Kosovo were numerous in the 1990s
Ethnic cleansing of Kosovars was feared
In 1989, Milosevic had stripped Kosovo of its political autonomy, formerly guaranteed by Yugoslavia’s 1974 constitution
About 90% of the population of Kosovo was of Albanian Muslim origin, the rest Serb, etc.
A Chronology of Violence, 1998 July: Serb forces
recapture areas controlled by separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)
September: NATO issues ultimatum to Yugoslav Pres. Milosevic to stop violence in Kosovo or face air strikes
October: Serbian forces withdraw from Kosovo and air strikes are averted
1999: Year of Decisions January: Violence
escalates in Kosovo; bodies of 45 ethnic Albanians discovered in Racak; William Walker, head of international inspectors, calls Racak a Serb police massacre; Louise Arbour is refused entry to Kosovo to probe killings
February: Six nation contact group summons Serbs and ethnic Albanians to talks at Rambouillet
1999 (continued) 19 February: Milosevic
declares Serbs will not give up Kosovo, even if bombed
1 March: Milosevic rejects international peacekeepers for Kosovo
20 March: All 1,380 international monitors withdraw from Kosovo
23 March: Serb parliament rejects NATO peackeepers for Kosovo; Holbrooke declares way open for NATO air strikes
1999 (continued) 24 March: NATO
bombing of Serb bases begins and mounts to about 34,000 air strikes over 78 days
24 March: All independent media in Kosovo closed by Milosevic
31 March: Clinton Administration estimates over one-third of Kosovo’s nearly 1.8 million ethnic Albanians have been forced from their homes by Serbian troops
The Role of Radio
2 April 1999: Serb government officials shut down independent radio station B92 and dismiss its manager
B92 continues to broadcast via the Internet and satellite. Local radio stations across Europe re-broadcast B92’s radio signal
All independent Serb newspapers were closed by Milosevic
NATO Initiatives 23-24 April: NATO missiles
destroy Serb State Television studios and transmitters; it resumes broadcasts 6 hours later
Tony Blair defends the attack as justified since it was part of the “apparatus of dictatorship and power of Milosevic.”
U.S. operated C-130 Commando Solo Hercules jammed Serb radio and TV broadcasts throughout the war
Errors of U.S. Psy-Ops Radio Commando Solo
broadcasters frequently jammed their own transmissions by mistake
The broadcasters spoke archaic Serbo-Croatian and were not believed
Their messages were unsophisticated and had little impact
Much more successful, was Radio Free Europe, which phoned Serbs and Kosovars and let them broadcast their concerns
Kosovo War Ended
May: The U.S. prepared to introduce large numbers of ground troops to end the war
9 June: NATO and Yugoslavia signed a peace accord providing for Serb troop withdrawal from Kosovo
10 June: The UN Security Council, voting 14 to 0 with China abstaining, accepted the Kosovo peace settlement
BURUNDI,1972
Like Rwanda, 85 percent of Burundi’s population is Hutu, about 14 percent Tutsi,
In 1972, about 100,000 educated Hutu were killed in cold blood by the Tutsi-led Burundi military to pre-empt any possibility of a Hutu takeover of the country, as had happened in Rwanda from 1959 to 1963
Impact of 1972 and 1993
For the Hutu leaders of Rwanda, the Burundi genocide of 1972 stood as a warning that given the chance, one day the Tutsi of Rwanda might commit a parallel genocide against them
In October 1993, the first democratically-elected Hutu president of Burundi, Melchoir Ndadaye, was killed in an abortive coup d’état four months after his election
October 1993
Widespread communal killing erupted in Burundi
150,000 were killed and 800,000 to one million fled as refugees into Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zaire
100,000 became internally displaced refugees
1994 in Burundi Hutu Cyprien Ntaryamira
became president of Burundi under an accord brokered by the Catholic Church. Hutu and Tutsi parties shared power in January
6 April: President Ntaryamira was killed. He was a passenger on President Habyarimana’s plane when it is shot down over Kigali by persons unknown
1994-1996 Low intensity warfare kills
thousands of Hutu and Tutsi in Burundi amidst a chaotic security situation
400,000 are internally displaced in Burundi
Of these, some 350,000 people were held in armed camps
In 1996, President Ntibantunganya was overthrown in a coup and succeeded by former President General Pierre Buyoya
1996-2001
Peace talks began at Arusha in June 1998
In October 2001, President Buyoya agreed to the deployment of about 550 South African troops in his country under a deal brokered by President Nelson Mandela
Burundi’s Dilemma
Burundi in 2001 was heading towards another genocide
To quote Ted Gurr, “the basic political dilemma . . . is that democracy inevitably leads to Hutu ascendancy commensurate with their numerical superiority, even while the mechanisms of coercion, particularly the military, remain solidly within the Tutsi sphere of competence.”
The Role of Radio: Building Common Ground
In 1995, Search for Common Ground, a Washington, DC- based NGO, established Studio Ijambo in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi
Funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Studio Ijambo employ's Hutu and Tutsi writers, editors, and producers to broadcast an original soap opera called “Our Neighbors, Our Selves” and the magazine show “Pillars of Humanity” about local heroes
Achievements of Studio Ijambo
Encouraged returnees from concentration camps to return to their homes in Bujumbura
Achieved a mass audience for broadcasts
Pressured government to import condoms for anti-AIDS work
Broke the state’s monopoly on public information (e.g. broadcast a Kirundi version of Pres. Mandela’s key address on the framework of the peace process after state-owned media refused
Breakthrough of 2003
A new Arusha Accord opened the door to a new Constitution for Burundi based on shared authority between Hutu and Tutsi in the military, police and government
A freer media emerged in Burundi with many independent radio stations
Lessons Learned 1. Straight news and
balanced truth-telling can overcome disinformation (UNTAC Radio)
2. Where hate radio messages are being broadcast in explosive situations, it is vital to either provide a trusted alternative source of honest news reporting or to interdict the transmission of hate messages through jamming or destruction of hate radio (Rwanda and Kosovo)
Lessons Learned(continued)
3. Humanitarian broadcasting to strengthen civil society and interdict genocides requires a radio presence before the crisis erupts to be effective; trust must be built (Cambodia, Kosovo and Burundi)
4. Native language speakers without suspicious accents are required for this work to succeed (Cambodia and Kosovo)
Lessons Learned(continued)
5. The export of modern radio broadcasting equipment to countries violating their human rights treaty obligations should be banned (Rwanda)
6. The creation of a Security Council authorized, rapidly-deployable radio jamming unit is essential (Rwanda)
Lessons Learned(continued)
7. In countries afflicted by extreme ethno-national tensions and violence, there is no substitute for joint production teams with members drawn from the rival ethnic groups (Burundi)
8. Soap operas aimed at the young and straight news are the primary means of countering hate propaganda (Burundi)
Simulation
Burundi, June 2015Pres. Nkurunziza insists he can run for a third term and wants to destroy power sharing between Hutu and TutsiCoup failedStreet protestors and some opposition leaders shot, independent radio stations closed downArms being distributed to militants of Pres.’s party, the CNDD-FDD
Your reponse: strategy and tactics? How do you give
Burundians access to an alternative source of independent news?
What themes should radio serial drama give prominence to in broadcasts?
What political strategies might head off new mass atrocity crimes in Burundi?
How do you neutralize the Imbonerakure “youth”?