Ruanda: Gedenken an den Völkermord

Völkermord in Ruanda: Frankreich sagt Teilnahme an Gedenkfeier ab
DIE ZEIT  6. April 2014  
   
Aus Protest boykottiert Frankreich die Gedenkveranstaltung für den Völkermord von 1994 in Ruanda. Präsident Kagame hatte gesagt, Frankreich habe Mitschuld am Genozid. [...]
Kagame hatte Frankreich in einem Interview mit der Zeitung Jeune Afrique vorgeworfen, am Genozid mit schuldig gewesen zu sein. Französische Soldaten, die für einen humanitären Militäreinsatz in der früheren belgischen Kolonie stationiert waren, seien Akteure und Komplizen bei den Massakern gewesen, sagte Kagame.

http://www.zeit.de/politik/2014-04/ruanda-frankreich-voelkermord

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Bundestag erinnert an Völkermord in Ruanda

4. April 2014

 

http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/bundestag-gedenken-ruanda100.html

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BBC News | Africa | Rwanda slaughter 'could have been prevented'               

March 31, 1999

The United States, Belgium, France and the UN Security Council all had prior warning about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and could have prevented it, says a new report published by the US-based Human Rights Watch group, "The Americans were interested in saving money, the Belgians were interested in saving face, and the French were interested in saving their ally, the genocidal government," said Alison Des Forges, a scholar on Rwanda and author of the report.
UN officials are accused of consistently refusing troop requests by the commanding officer of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda.
Lt Gen Romeo Dallaire of Canada warned of 1994's systematic killing, but support forces were never sent.
Belgium pulled its troops out following the deaths of 10 Belgian peacekeepers on the first day of the genocide. Belgium subsequently supported the US position against increasing the peacekeepers' mandate.
France, a close ally of the Hutu government in Rwanda, has been accused of sending them military support both before and during the genocide.
Entitled "Leave none to tell the story," the 771-page report criticizes the US, Belgium, France and the UN Security Council because they "failed to act effectively". [...]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/308542.stm

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Ruanda: 14 Jahre Haft wegen Beihilfe zu Genozid

ZEIT online  8. Februar 2014               

Nach mehr als drei Jahren ist vor dem Oberlandesgericht (OLG) Frankfurt am Main ein Prozess um den Völkermord in Ruanda beendet worden. Die Richter verurteilten Onesphore R., der als Bürgermeister einer Gemeinde im Nordosten Ruandas 1994 ein Massaker in einer Kirche befehligt haben soll, zu 14 Jahren Haft.

Der Mann habe seine Anhänger vor 20 Jahren zu den Morden in der Ortschaft Kiziguro aufgestachelt, urteilte das Oberlandesgericht. Er habe sich damit der Beihilfe zum Völkermord schuldig gemacht. Es ist das erste Urteil eines deutschen Gerichts zur Schuld an einem Massaker während des Völkermordes in Ruanda. In Kiziguro waren 1994 mindestens 400 Menschen getötet worden.

Der Angeklagte lebt bereits seit 2002 als Asylbewerber in Deutschland, deshalb durfte der Fall auch vor einem deutschen Gericht verhandelt werden. Hierbei gilt das sogenannte Weltrechtsprinzip, nach dem die Justiz eines Landes in Fällen wie Völkermord tätig werden darf, auch wenn die Taten in einem anderen Land begangen wurden oder der mutmaßliche Täter anderer Nationalität ist. Ausreichend ist, dass sich der Täter in dem betreffenden Land aufhält.  [...]

Im ostafrikanischen Ruanda waren zwischen April und Juli 1994 nach UN-Angaben 800.000 Menschen umgebracht worden. Die meisten der Opfer gehörten der Volksgruppe der Tutsi an.

http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2014-02/voelkermord-ruanda-gerichtsurteil


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Aus: taz Nr. 6157 vom 2.6.2000 (Seite 10)
Gefunden auf "Friedensratschlag"

Ruanda
UNO-Tribunal verurteilt Kriegshetzer
Verfasser: Dominic Johnson

Der Völkermord in Ruanda 1994, in dessen Verlauf mehr als eine Million Menschen bestialisch ermordet wurden, wird von einem UN-Kriegsverbrechertribunal behandelt. Zur Sprache kam auch die Rolle der Medien in diesem Krieg. Zwei Artikel in der taz befassten sich am 2. Juni 2000 mit einem außerordentlich bedeutsamen Schuldspruch gegen einen Rundfunkjournalisten.
Das Töten mit Worten wird bestraft [...]

Das Ruanda-Tribunal der Vereinten Nationen hat gestern ein historisches Urteil gefällt. Zum ersten Mal wurde ein Journalist wegen Aufwiegelung zum Völkermord und Beteiligung daran verurteilt. Der Italo-Belgier Georges Ruggiu, einst hochrangiger Mitarbeiter des Völkermordradios "Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines" (RTLM), bekam zwölf Jahre Gefängnis [...]

Nach Angaben der Anklage des im tansanischen Arusha tagenden Tribunals ist der Fall Ruggiu ein Präzedenzfall, der hilft, den in der Rechtsgeschichte neuen Tatbestand der "Aufwiegelung zum Völkermord" präziser zu definieren. Bisher hat das Ruanda-Tribunal nur ein einziges Urteil wegen Aufwiegelung gefällt - gegen Jean-Paul Akayesu, während des ruandischen Völkermordes von 1994 Bürgermeister der Gemeinde Taba. Er hatte in Reden zum Massenmord an der Tutsi-Minderheit aufgerufen. Mit dem Urteil gegen Ruggiu, dessen Sender während des Genozides in Ruanda das Hauptmedium für Appelle zur Vernichtung von Tutsi war, werden nun auch Völkermordaufrufe in den Medien justiziabel. Ruggiu soll nun als Zeuge der Anklage auftreten, wenn am 5. Juni in Arusha ein Sammelprozess gegen ruandische Journalisten beginnt: Ferdinand Nahimana, Exdirektor von RTLM und Hassan Ngeze, Exchefredakteur der Hutu-Extremistenzeitung Kangura. Dieses Verfahren wird nach dem Urteil gegen Ruggiu, der ursprünglich zu den Mitangeklagten in diesem Sammelprozess gehören sollte, erstmals direkte Einblicke in die Rolle der Medien bei der Entstehung und Verbreitung von Rassenhass im Afrika der Großen Seen bieten. [...]

Die fortdauernden militärischen Aktivitäten ruandischer und burundischer Hutu-Milizen im Osten des Kongo gegen die dort stationierten ruandischen und burundischen Armeen tragen zum Klima der Intoleranz bei. In Ruanda, das eigentlich seit der ruandischen Besetzung Ostkongos militärisch relativ ruhig ist, kam es, wie erst jetzt bekannt wurde, am 24. Mai zum ersten bestätigten

Angriff von aus dem Kongo eingesickerten Hutu-Milizen in diesem Jahr. Auch in Burundi haben sich in den letzten Wochen die Kämpfe zwischen Hutu-Guerilla und Tutsi-dominierter Armee verstärkt.

http://www.ag-friedensforschung.de/regionen/Ruanda/urteil-journalist.html

Aus einem Interview mit Helmut Strizek, geführt von Cathrin Schütz

Friedensratschlag, 05.08.2011

Dr. Helmut Strizek, Jahrgang 1942, war von 1980 bis 1983 Teil der EU-Delegation in Ruanda. 1987 bis 1989 war er Referent für Ruanda und Burundi im Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung. Er hat auf Antrag der Verteidigung in zahlreichen Verfahren vor dem UN-Tribunal für Ruanda als Experte ausgesagt.

Es heißt, Kagame kam als Vertreter der Opfer an die Macht, nachdem die Hutu 1994 einen brutalen Völkermord an den Tutsi verübt hätten und habe sich der Versöhnung der Volksgruppen verschrieben.

Diese von der damaligen US-Regierung unter Bill Clinton initiierte und in Deutschland mit großer Wirkung vom taz-Redakteur Dominic Johnson propagierte »offizielle Lesart« ist historisch unhaltbar. In Ruanda haben 1994 nach meinen Analysen zwei Völkermorde stattgefunden. Marodierende Hutu-Banden ermordeten Tutsi. Gleichzeitig kam es zu Massenmorden an der Hutu-Bevölkerung durch die aus Uganda vordringenden Rebellen der Ruandischen Patriotischen Front (RPF), die von Exiltutsi dominiert und von Kagame geführt wurde und heute den Staat bestimmt. 

Haben nicht ranghohe Hutu-Extremisten den ruandischen Präsidenten wegen dessen Verhandlungsabsichten mit der RPF ermordet und ihren Plan der Ausrottung der Tutsi in die Tat umgesetzt?

Der Genozid an den Tutsi war eine fürchterliche Racheaktion entwurzelter Hutu, die bei den verschiedenen Angriffswellen der RPF seit 1990 aus dem Norden Ruandas vertrieben worden waren und seither unter schlimmen Bedingungen in inländischen Flüchtlingslagern vegetierten. Von dort wurden sie beim erneuten Angriff der RPF nach dem Attentat auf den Präsidenten Juvenal Habyarimana am 6. April 1994 wieder vertrieben. Teile von ihnen zogen dann im dadurch ausgelösten Machtvakuum mordend und brandschatzend durchs Land. […]

Es gibt viele Anhaltspunkte für eine Verantwortung von Kagames RPF für das den Völkermord auslösende Attentat. […]

Das OLG schloß Sie ungeachtet Ihrer Expertise als Gutachter im Prozeß gegen R. aus. […]

Dennoch scheint der vorsitzende Richter Sie ernst zu nehmen. Zeugen aus Ruanda fragt er immer, ob sie vor ihrer Anreise von ruandischen Behörden unter Druck gesetzt worden seien. Daß dies bisher stets verneint wurde, vermag angesichts möglicher Konsequenzen bei der Rückkehr nach Ruanda nicht verwundern. Ein unlösbares Dilemma?

[…] Es ist unmöglich, die Ereignisse in Ostruanda im April 1994 objektiv zu untersuchen. ICTR-Zeugen wurden manipuliert und bekamen für vorbereitete falsche Belastungsaussagen von der Kagame-Diktatur Vergünstigungen. 

Auch die Verteidigung von R. betont das Glaubwürdigkeitsproblem der Zeugen. Tatsächlich haben gegen R. bereits Zeugen ausgesagt, die zur Zeit der Befragung durch das deutsche BKA in Ruanda in Haft waren und kurz danach freikamen. Diskrepanzen zwischen den Angaben gegenüber dem BKA in Ruanda und im Gerichtssaal sind ebenfalls alltäglich. […] 

Die Anklage betont, R. habe in den Tagen der ihm vorgeworfenen Massaker stets gemeinsam mit einem gewissen Jean Baptist Gatete, ebenfalls Bürgermeister, agiert. Auch Belastungszeugen behaupten dies, andere widersprechen. Gatete selbst wurde kürzlich vor dem ICTR verurteilt. Wirft das einen Schatten auf die Verteidigung von R.?

Wenn R. in der fraglichen Zeit so eng mit Gatete, der damals kein Bürgermeister mehr war, kooperierte, wie es die Anklage behauptet, warum ist der Name von R. im Gatete-Prozeß, in dem es auch um Mittäter ging, dann nicht einmal erwähnt worden?

Auch das Gatete-Urteil schließt die Augen vor den Erkenntnissen der spanischen und französischen Ermittlungsrichter, wonach Kagames RPF hinter dem den Völkermord auslösenden Attentat steht. Auch die sofort danach beginnende RPF-Aggression und das Chaos, das unmittelbar danach im Volk ausbrach, werden ausgeblendet. […].

http://www.ag-friedensforschung.de/regionen/Ruanda/kagame4.html

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Die Machete in einer Hand und das Radio in der anderen

Genocide journalist Georges Ruggiu, Echoes of Violence      

Rwanda News Agency

29 May 2009 by Darryl Li                                

Seven years after the fact, the most enduring—and perhaps haunting—image of the Rwandan genocide is that of the nameless Hutu peasant standing over a pit of putrid corpses, a machete in one hand and a radio in the other. The manner of his gaze is unclear, but there is no mistaking the tinny voice blaring from the tiny receiver as anything other than the infamous Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), the station whose broadcasts were a background score to the killings.

The semi-private “hate radio” station, linked to an elite circle of Hutu hard-liners, was allegedly the brainchild of Ferdinand Nahimana, a Sorbonne-trained historian currently on trial before a UN-run court in Tanzania for incitement to genocide. During its brief existence as the first licensed private broadcaster in the country, RTLM quickly surpassed the stilted, government-run Radio Rwanda in popularity with a combination of virulence, humor, and style. “They talked off the cuff about a subject they mastered: hatred,” a former press liaison with the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) told me.
For the notorious state-sponsored Interahamwe militia who were the shock troops of the genocide, RTLM’s broadcasts were orders, its denunciations death warrants. In one well-known incident, an RTLM reporter covering an attempt by UN peacekeepers to rescue a group of refugees from the Hôtel Mille Collines in Kigali relayed the names of all sixty-two evacuees on the air, including several prominent opponents of the regime. Soon thereafter, a group of Interahamwe stopped the UN convoy and singled out several of those named on the radio for abuse; only intense diplomatic pressure saved them from being massacred. Tutsi civilians sheltered in a mosque in Kigali’s Nyamirambo neighborhood in the first weeks of the genocide were not so lucky; after a cue from RTLM, militia and soldiers butchered some six hundred people inside, while the station gleefully reported the results.

In the summer of 2000, six years after it was knocked off the air in the wake of the collapse of the genocidal regime, reminders of RTLM could be found everywhere. The Kigali hostel in which I slept was owned by a nearby church, whose priest, Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, allegedly carried a radio tuned to RTLM during the genocide while singling out Tutsi members of his flock for elimination (Munyeshyaka later fled to France). Walking through the crowded streets, I often passed stalls where one could still buy cassettes featuring the extremist songs of Simon Bikindi (arrested by Dutch authorities this summer and sent to the UN tribunal), a staple of the RTLM diet. And in the city’s central prison, I found many alleged génocidaires, most of them ordinary farmers, such as Frodouald Ndoliyobijya, who recalled RTLM’s antics with a mischievous giggle one minute and in the next humbly told of how he murdered a Tutsi whom his father had tried to save.

RTLM’s lingering omnipresence had to do with the fact that the Interahamwe were only a small part of a nationwide audience that tuned in for news, entertainment, and the latest instructions. The station spread hateful propaganda about the country’s Tutsi minority, guided people to where the “enemy” hid, and goaded ordinary people into joining the killings—the most famous of its entreaties being the uncharacteristically blatant “The graves are only half full! Who will help us to fill them?” For many reasons besides radio, hundreds of thousands of people heeded these calls by manning roadblocks, joining search patrols, looting, and steadily killing in their own locales.

“It’s a lie if a farmer says he didn’t like RTLM,” said Bernard Rutaremara, who awaits trial in Kigali’s central prison for participating in the killings.

Although three months of conversations with detainees, survivors, and others made it clear that Rwandans actively debated and critiqued what they heard on competing radio stations—including Radio Rwanda and the RPF-controlled Radio Muhabura—RTLM somehow captured the national imagination. Through radio, the genocide unfolded in thousands of locales, turning ordinary Rwandans into witnesses to the killings and bringing them into the massacres in ways at once both terrifying and mundane. As Mwamini Nyrandegeya, a woman of mixed ethnicity who survived the genocide as a servant to the militiaman who raped her, put it, “RTLM animait dans l’ambiance du moment.” One also could say that the station’s animateurs* helped to shape that ambience as well.

Making Sense of it All

The first time I saw Valérie Bemeriki, the infamous RTLM animatrice, was through the window of a reception area in Kigali’s central prison. […]

 

Bemeriki acquired a reputation during the genocide for her impassioned, almost frenzied, announcing style. During our interviews, she dismissed RTLM transcripts as forgeries and swept aside uncomfortable questions, instead launching into long, rambling monologues about how massacres of unarmed Tutsi civilians were in fact battles between government troops and rebels. […]

Despite the outrageousness of some of her claims, Bemeriki had a point. To the outsider’s eye, RTLM’s transcripts reveal few explicit instructions to murder. In the ideological universe of RTLM, one never spoke of killing, but only of “work” or “clearing the brush” (courtesy of “tools,” rather than machetes or clubs, of course). The word “Tutsi” itself was used far less often than inyenzi (cockroaches) or inkotanyi (the self-given nickname of RPF fighters). This indirectness, which left nothing unsaid, is apparent even in the title of the Simon Bikindi hit “You Know What I’m Saying.”

For these euphemisms to take on such meanings—to make roadblock duty, search patrols, and killing acceptable activities for people to take part in—RTLM appropriated three ideas that had shaped modern Rwanda’s understanding of itself: History, Democracy, and Development. The narrative of History provided a raison d’être for the postcolonial regime through comparisons with the merciless exploitation of Hutu farmers by Tutsi collaborators during the era of Belgian rule. Democracy, meaning little more than the crude arithmetic of ethnic majoritarianism, scapegoated Tutsi to mask the dominance of a narrow clique of northern Hutu under a shared bond of ethnicity. And the elusive goal of Development, promising a vague future of prosperity, justified umuganda, a weekly ritual of communal labor forced on nearly every peasant in the country.

For decades before the genocide, these ideas were the foundation of an authoritarian, single-party state that micromanaged the population and in which Tutsi were marginalized but almost never attacked.

The genocide turned these concepts upside down, weaving a coherent ideological tapestry that made euphemisms such as “work” into powerful metaphors for making sense of one’s actions, no matter how terrible the implications of those actions may have been. RTLM invoked History, Democracy, and Development to mobilize people rather than to render them docile, using these familiar ideas to mask unthinkable ends.

RTLM regularly compared the genocide to the 1959 revolution that overthrew Tutsi hegemony, collapsing past into present to raise the terrifying specter of a return to the ancien régime. In what was an almost constant refrain, Kantano Habimana, RTLM’s star animateur, warned listeners: “Masses, be vigilant. . . . What you fought for in ’59 is being taken away.” […]

When speaking of democracy to justify the killings, the station urged Hutu to put aside differences and close ranks against the common Tutsi threat. RTLM made a fetish of the language of majorities and minorities, styling itself as the voice of the rubanda nyamwinshi (“numerous people”). The station argued that the numerical superiority of the Hutu meant both that their cause was just and their victory inevitable. By extension, only the Tutsi could be blamed for their fate—“Will those people truly continue to commit suicide against the majority?” Habimana once asked with rhetorical incredulity.

In its announcements, advice, and encouragements, RTLM cast participation in the genocide in the mold of umuganda, likening extermination to controlling soil erosion or preventing forest fires, efforts in which everyone had to pitch in.

“Hello, good day, have you started to work yet?” RTLM asked its listeners every morning. Indeed, many of the tasks of the genocide eerily resembled umuganda, with farmers turning up for their shifts under the same supervisors with the same tools (mostly machetes and hoes), as if it were just another day of clearing fields or planting trees.

Yet the code of the genocide, like all totalitarian languages, sometimes could not be sustained. One Rwandan told interviewers that RTLM “called for all the Tutsi to be exterminated. Bemeriki would say, for example, ‘Kill! Kill! Go to Nyamirambo! I have just been there, and there aren’t any bodies in the streets yet. It’s still tidy. You have to start cleaning!” On the other hand, as news spread that France was sending troops to Rwanda to bring humanitarian aid and cover the withdrawal of the collapsing genocidal regime, Bemeriki told Hutu to welcome the troops warmly. After months of mixing anti-Tutsi invective with superficial assurances that not all Tutsi were bad, it was only sensible for her to make it absolutely clear that these white men were different from the hated Belgians. “If you are told to do something, you are not told to do the opposite,” Bemeriki insisted. “If we are saying that we should welcome the French, that does not mean that we should throw stones at them.”

The Genocide, Live

A few months before the genocide, Claver Kizungu, a Tutsi farmer living east of Kigali, happened upon a spectacle in the local market. The editor-in-chief of RTLM, Gaspard Gahigi, had arrived with a mobile studio and was broadcasting live in front of a crowd of several hundred locals. “He said that the Tutsi were bad and that they killed many people when they were in power, and that you had to know they are the enemy and get them,” Kizungu recalled. During the monologue, a neighbor—Vedaste Nteziryayo—looked over in Kizungu’s direction and menaced him with a slashing motion across the throat. The same Vedaste Nteziryayo went on to kill many people during the genocide, although another of his Tutsi neighbors insisted that he was a good man who had saved lives as well.

Whether in person or on the air, RTLM’s animateurs helped listeners experience the genocide as a series of small performances upon which the edifice of larger ideologies could be built. They adroitly navigated and manipulated the hierarchies and bonds within audiences, turning the very act of listening into a form of participation in the genocide.

Sometimes, RTLM played with its listeners as much as it played to them, using mistrust and fear to build unity. During one interview at a roadblock, a man boasted of having helped to kill five inyenzi. Habimana encouraged him to “keep it up” and then advised listeners, “When testing if people like a radio station, you must ask the following question: who are the animateurs of the radio whom you know? Who are the RTLM animateurs you know?. . . If you do not know them that means that you do not like this radio.” The pressure to listen-–and to be seen listening—to the station was immense. “Some people were against RTLM, but didn’t have the strength to say so in public,” recalled Jamad Nkundintware, a Hutu mason. […]”
Although few of the station’s listeners had access to a telephone, RTLM found ways of actively involving audiences. Animateurs relayed personal messages from listeners, while soldiers and militia spontaneously brought suspected RPF collaborators to the station’s studios to be interrogated on the air. Similarly, RTLM’s announcements provided practical advice that went into planning day-to-day activities. One Hutu farmer I spoke to recalled several of his neighbors proclaiming, “Kantano [Habimana] said there are no RPF troops here, so we can continue our work.”

In a sense, ordinary Rwandans, too, performed RTLM’s broadcasts. Almost every personal message, public service announcement, and piece of gossip transmitted found its way by word of mouth beyond those who actually heard them, making each radio a potential spawning ground for new performances. According to one of his former neighbors, a murderer of some notoriety named Hakiri used to spend mornings sitting on the corrugated metal roof of his shop outside Kigali with a radio to his ear, listening to RTLM. His mood darkened during the broadcasts, and he would climb down and gather people to tell them what he had heard of the latest Tutsi atrocities. Across the country, thousands of listeners were relaying, embellishing, and even misrepresenting RTLM’s broadcasts. In We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, Philip Gourevitch writes of a prominent Hutu extremist who, taking pity on some Tutsi children at a roadblock, admonishes the militiaman harassing them, “Don’t you listen to the radio? The French said if we don’t stop killing children they’ll stop arming and helping us.” […]

Household Names

More so than Radio Rwanda or the RPF’s Radio Muhabura, RTLM’s animateurs developed personas in which listeners invested authority and trust. Kantano Habimana captivated audiences with his electrifying announcing style, narrating the results of massacres as if they were victories on the football pitch (he is rumored to have died in a refugee camp in Congo after the genocide). The raucous, hard-drinking Noël (Noheli) Hitimana was much beloved from his years at Radio Rwanda. RTLM even had its token white man, a Belgian named Georges Ruggiu. […]
Samson Karungura, who killed ten people during the genocide, remembered speculating that Ruggiu’s being on RTLM meant either that he couldn’t find a job in his own country or that the station had the strength of foreign support. “Moderates said if there is a white man working [for RTLM], they would be able to destroy any opposition,” recalled Protegène Shyaka, a Tutsi shopkeeper.

Some of Ruggiu’s monologues seemed to do little other than leverage his Europeanness for credibility. During one evening program broadcast several weeks before the genocide, Ruggiu read passages from Machiavelli’s The Prince on the air, expounding on the necessity of disingenuousness in politics, while classical European music droned on in the background. “Here then is Nicholas [sic] Machiavelli, who speaks through my voice,” Ruggiu announced, as if taking on the role of a spirit medium. Centuries of “civilization” hung in the air like overripe fruit, dangling just out of the reach of the Rwandans listening in rural hilltop homes. […]

[O]nly a fraction of the population knew enough French to fully understand him. […] According to several people I interviewed, educated French speakers, themselves often local organizers of the genocide, regularly translated and explained Ruggiu’s broadcasts for others. The result was a sort of mutual reinforcement, enhancing the credibility of these elites while at the same time extending the reach and authority of Ruggiu’s words.

Ironically, the only people who seemed curiously unaware of the significance of Ruggiu’s whiteness were those whose duty it was to exact justice upon him. The UN judges who sentenced Ruggiu to twelve years in prison cited his European background and consequent unfamiliarity with Rwanda as mitigating factors in determining his punishment, but never mentioned that his being European was key to his involvement with RTLM in the first place.

Noheli Sends His Best

[…] James Nshogozabahizi, a Hutu farmer, described daily life during the genocide on the hill where he lived, east of Kigali. The “work” of manning roadblocks or searching houses began in the morning, when some locals would report to the authorities. It would continue until 5 p.m. or so, and then people would gather in the local bar to drink, chat, and listen to RTLM before retiring to bed and waking up the next morning. Several dozen kilometers away I met Tito Rutaremara, a Tutsi, who recalled that during breaks in the work day, locals would gather in groups as large as a hundred to listen to RTLM, closely following the information relayed to plan the next day’s activities. I asked if this happened every day. “Of course,” he replied. “It was work. It was to know what to do.”
Much of the killing in Rwanda in 1994 was marked not by the fury of combat or paroxysms of mob violence, but by a well-ordered sanity that mirrored the rhythms of ordinary collective life. After all, what is striking about the genocide is not simply that the priest, the schoolteacher, and the radio animateur spoke with one voice of the necessity to “work,” but rather that they did so during the weekly sermon, the daily lesson, and the hourly bulletin.

Radio’s subtle presence was a key entry point of the state into the lives of its citizens. For the people I spoke to who owned radios, listening was often the first thing they did in the morning and the last thing they did at night. For others, catching the latest news was often a major reason for visiting neighbors or swinging by the local bar. In a country with few newspapers or televisions, the medium’s portability and many uses enable it to cross boundaries of public and private life and to punctuate daily schedules. Of RTLM’s animateurs, none had a more intuitive grasp of this than Noheli Hitimana.

After a decade on the air at Radio Rwanda, Hitimana was a part of the lives of millions of Rwandans. During the early morning shift, widely listened to by farmers rising to tend their fields, he was known for calling out to the farthest mountains in the country, issuing greetings to various regions, and saluting individuals with whom he had shared a drink the night before. “He showed that Radio Rwanda was interested in its listeners,” explained confessed génocidaire Elie Ndabamenye, adding that a greeting from Hitimana was something like a small honor, a moment of celebrity and recognition for hard work.

Hitimana carried on in a similar vein at RTLM. His monologues featured litanies of places where local residents were warned to remain vigilant or urged to hunt down inyenzi. Similarly, Hitimana converted his habit of saluting individuals into a means of denouncing them. According to a report by the press freedom NGO Article 19, one of those threatened was opposition journalist Joseph Mudatsikira. “Let me say Hello, child of my mother,” Hitimana said, adopting a tone of playful familiarity. “Let me salute you, as you are the same as Noheli [that is, also a journalist]. . . . If you die just as everyone else has been speaking about you, it is not like dying like a sheep, without having been spoken of. When we have spoken about you, you have effectively been spoken of.” Mudatsikira was killed several days later. Hitimana’s broadcasts on RTLM exploited a decade’s worth of familiarity in order to insinuate the genocide into everyday life, to make its presence felt even in small homes in rural areas at dawn—including the many in which Tutsi were being hidden. For the Hutu who risked their lives to shelter others, however, the intimacy of Hitimana’s broadcasts made them more than death threats. It made them betrayals, signals to listeners that underneath all that defined their world, even routines followed in the privacy of the home, lay the possibility of treachery, of being attacked by a Tutsi neighbor or accused of treason by a Hutu friend. Providing an example of what to emulate and a warning of what to avoid, Hitimana showed that it was better to denounce than to be denounced and that even personal ties could be subordinated to the imperatives of the genocide.

A Harmony of the Spheres

[…] Another time, an acquaintance of mine told me that after the genocide, he ran into the man who had killed his parents, a family friend named Emmanuel, and did not know what to do. Or rather, he wanted to do so many things at the same time that he did nothing. “If you need anything, any help, just let me know,” Emmanuel told him sincerely. Richard nodded and went about his life.
Like the killings, RTLM, too, was omnipresent, routinized, and intimate. By articulating a language of massacre, bringing listeners together as witnesses and performers, and infiltrating everyday routines, it may even have been the key thing that helped transform the genocide from a state-led campaign into a nationwide project. Without it, there might have been, during the late evenings in bars after a shift at the roadblock, or in the midst of a nighttime walk home past a banana grove, machete in hand, at least some stillness, a bit of silence, a moment to think alone.


This article was published in 2002, adapted from a longer study on the role of radio in the Rwandan genocide for Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc. Author Darryl Li was working for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, in the Gaza strip. 

http://www.rnanews.com/politics/1359-genocide-journalist-georges-ruggiu-echoes-of-violence

• Hiding in plain sight in France: The priests accused in Rwandan genocide
  The Guardian  07 April 2014
  Chris McGreal in Gisors, Normandy
  
  [...] In 2005, the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), then in the process of convicting many of the political and military leaders who oversaw the genocide, issued charges against Father Wenceslas. The indictment was a catalogue of horror. The priest, it said, conspired with leaders of the extremist Hutu militia spearheading the killing of Tutsis. It alleges that he helped draw up lists of men to die, stood by as Tutsis were taken away and killed, allowed the militia to roam his church hunting for victims, and that he raped young women. [...]
  The drive to bring Father Wenceslas to trial for his alleged crimes has dragged from Rwanda to French judges to the international tribunal and back to the Paris courts. The priest has been arrested and released several times. The survivors are despairing of ever seeing justice for what they endured two decades ago.
  But for the Roman Catholic church there is more at stake than the future of a single cleric. Father Wenceslas is just one member of the clergy at the heart of a struggle over where to pin moral responsibility for the genocide.
  The Vatican paints the church as a victim not only of the mass killings – because priests and nuns were among the those slaughtered – but of persecution by Rwanda's present government, which has jailed members of the clergy and accused the church leadership of having blood on its hands.
  Two hundred or more priests and nuns, Tutsi and Hutu, were murdered during the genocide. Some died courageously attempting to save lives or refusing to abandon their parishioners. But there were other priests who murdered. [...]http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/07/rwanda-genocide-20-years-priests-catholic-church

 
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"Ruanda ist heute" mahnt Sarah Brockmeier, stellvertretende Vorsitzende von Genocide Alert e.V.,
 am 27.03.2014 in der ZEIT
http://www.zeit.de/2014/14/ruanda-voelkermord-jahrestag 

 

Damit hat sie in gewisser Weise Recht.

Aber wenn sie die "deutsche Friedensbewegung" dafuer verantwortlich macht, dass die deutsche Regierung sich nicht gegen Voelkermord in der Zentralafrikanischen Rebublik und gegen die Massaker in Syrien engagiert, verfaellt sie in die Denkschablone der Gleichsetzung von "Aktion" und "Militaeraktion".

Im Verlauf des Artikels kommt sie dann doch noch darauf, dass diese Gleichsetzung allzu schablonenhaft ist und raeumt ein:

"Deutschland [...] könnte einiges tun, diesseits des Militärischen: frühzeitig politisch vermitteln. Gezielte Sanktionen gegen verantwortliche Eliten verhängen. Entwicklungshilfe stoppen. Die internationale Strafverfolgung stärken. Mehr Polizisten, Soldaten und anderes Fachpersonal für Friedensmissionen bereitstellen."

Die Auflistung nicht-militaerischer Massnahmen bleibt allerdings sehr vage und vor allem auf Begleitmassnahmen zum Militaereinsatz ausgerichtet. Gerade hier ist die Friedensbewegung gefragt, um darzustellen, welche Auswirkungen die Bekaempfung von Gewalt mit Gewalt tatsaechlich hat (siehe auch Kagames Vorwurf bezueglich der Rolle franzoesischer Soldaten), und welche nicht-militaerischen Optionen konkret zur Verfuegung stehen.

 

Vor allem: Wie verhindert und bekaempft man eine Massenpsychose?

Fatal ist die Gleichsetzung von Nicht-Bomben mit Nicht-Handeln.   

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Interessantes zu "Genocide Alert e. V."
von Heise online

Geht es eher um die Propagierung von Militaereinsetzen als um einen umfassenden Ansatz gegen Voelkermord?

Als Referent [...] wurde von den Piraten Dr. Robert Schütte eingeladen, hauptberuflich Politikberater in der eigenen Lobbyfirma First Avenue Germany, sowie Vorsitzender des Vereins Genocide Alert e.V.. In dieser Funktion ist Schütte bekannt für markige Töne. "Der Bürgerkrieg in Syrien wird nur dann diplomatisch zu lösen sein, wenn ein militärisches Eingreifen nicht länger tabuisiert wird. Der Westen sollte vor dieser unangenehmen Wahrheit nicht die Augen verschließen", schrieb er etwa Ende letzten Jahres. Auch zum Thema Libyen wurde Schütte deutlich: "Das Eingreifen der NATO anhand eines UN-Mandats war das richtige Signal. Die Staatengemeinschaft hat gerade noch rechtzeitig ein libysches Srebrenica verhindern können. Die Schutzverantwortung ist der manifestierte Wille zum Schutz der Menschenrechte - eine Schande, dass Deutschland dabei nur zuguckt." [...]

Selten reflektiert wird zudem der Zusammenhang, in dem solche Aufforderungen zum "Eingreifen" veröffentlicht werden. Dr. Robert Schütte etwa publiziert seine oben zitierten Texte regelmäßig im Magazin "The European", das von Alexander Görlach, einem politisch auffällig gut vernetzten Journalisten, geleitet wird. Görlach ist Mitglied der transatlantischen Lobby-Gruppe "Atlantik-Brücke", war stellvertretender Pressesprecher der CDU/CSU-Bundestagsfraktion, außerdem PR-Berater von BMW, und ist nebenher als Kolumnist bei bild.de tätig. Über Netzwerke wie diese wird der Ruf nach mehr "außenpolitischer Verantwortung" Deutschlands regelmäßig mit großer Verve publiziert.

 

http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/39/39452/2.html

Toedlicher Hass aus dem Radio:
Unter „R.T.L.M. Transcripts“ sind Mitschriften von Sendungen des „Radio-Television Libre des Milles Collines“ (R.T.L.M.) zu finden; teils mit englischer Uebersetzung.

„Westliche Regierungen“, so ist in der Einleitung zu lesen, waren ueber die Hasssendungen besorgt, unternahmen aber nichts. Ruecksicht auf das freie Unternehmertum (R.T.L.M. war ein Privatsender, wenn auch nicht ganz ohne staatliche Zuschuesse), und die Idee der „Redefreiheit“ spielten eine Rolle.
Dieses Nicht-Handeln - aufgrund einer in der Rueckschau unumstritten fehlgeleiteten Interpretation von „Freiheit“ - wird bis heute viel weniger thematisiert als das Nicht-Handeln im militaerischen Bereich (was auch an dem ZEIT-Beitrag von Sarah Brockmeyer abzulesen ist; s.o.). - Anm. Blogger

R.T.L.M. Transcripts
http://www.rwandafile.com/rtlm/index.html

Aus der Einleitung (Name des Verfassers nicht angegeben):

R.T.L.M., standing for Radio-Télévision Libre des Milles Collines or Free Radio and Television of the Thousand Hills, was probably the most successful hate radio station in the history of the world. It was a privately owned station (though it did receive funding from the state-run Radio Rwanda) and broadcast from 8 July 1993 to 31 July 1994. It was staffed exclusively by Hutus and made no secret of its extreme bias against the Tutsi minority. Not only did it broadcast anti-Tutsi propaganda, it explicitly directed that they be exterminated, encouraged those who were doing the extermination and even read out known locations of Tutsis with orders to kill them. […]
The concept and the threat of R.T.L.M. were not unknown to Western governments, who on more than one occasion considered jamming the transmissions. This never happened due to concerns about money and, more often, worries that jamming a privately-owned radio station was a denial of free speech. In retrospect, there is little debate that a serious mistake was made in not acting.
After the genocide, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found four individuals related to R.T.L.M. guilty of genocide, complicity in genocide, crimes against humanity and incitement to genocide, among other things. Georges Ruggiu, one of the station’s principle broadcasters, was sentenced to twelve years in prison. Hassan Ngeze, a major shareholder editor of R.T.L.M.’s magazine equivalent, Kangura, was given a life sentence. So were the two directors of the station, Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza (though the latter’s sentence was reduced to 35 years due to rights violations in bringing him to trial). […]

However, these transcriptions are not readily available. The tapes themselves were destroyed in a fire in Arusha, Tanzania, in 2004. The transcripts are available through the I.C.T.R.’s “webdrawer,” an incredibly complex, confusing and slow website prone to power shortages at nature’s discretion, though still a fantastic resource. […]My goal is, in short, to take every tape in the I.C.T.R. database and convert it to a more accessible text form. I would then like to proofread them and post them on the site alongside the original PDF file from the database. However, there are some complications. First off, most of the transcripts are in Kinyarwanda and were not translated. Many of those that were translated were translated into French, and of those only some were converted to English. All original PDF transcripts will be included, but as I speak neither French nor Kinyarwanda, only those which have been translated into English will be published as text. […]

Schutzverantwortung/ Responsibility to Protect:

Sind Genodice Alert e.V. und International Committee for the Responsibility to Protect (ICRtoP) Stimmen fuer eine vor allem militaerisch ausgerichtete Interpretation von "Deutschlands Verantwortung in der Welt"?
Welche Rolle spielt ihre Lobby-Arbeit in der deutschen Politik?
 

Siehe z.B. eine von Genocide Alert e.V. organisierte Panel-Diskussion

http://responsibilitytoprotect.org/Invitation%20Panel%20Discussion%20Germany%20and%20R2P%2010%20May%202012.pdf

Und weiter:

"Gesetze und Regulierungen setzen den Rahmen wirtschaftlichen Handelns und können über den langfristigen Erfolg Ihres Geschäfts entscheiden. Wir vertreten Ihre Interessen gegenüber der deutschen und europäischen Politik, informieren Entscheidungsträger und schaffen Verständnis für die Wünsche und Sorgen unserer Klienten. Vertreter in Bundestag und Regierung wissen qualifizierten Input zu schätzen und berücksichtigen diesen in Ihren Entscheidungen. Verschaffen Sie Ihrer Stimme Gehör mit den First Avenue Germanys flexiblen Instrumenten der politisch-wirtschaftlichen Interessenvertretung!"

- Von der Webseite der Firma "First Avenue Germany" des Dr. Robert Schütte, der gleichzeitig Vorsitzender des Vereins "Genocide Alert e.V." ist.

http://www.firstavenuegermany.de/

Zum Angebot der Firma gehoeren u.a. "politische Interessenvertretung", "Krisenkommunikation" und "Web Reputationsmonitoring". Zahlungskraeftige Kunden koennen also mit Hilfe dieser Firma politische Prozesse beeinflussen und ihr Image in der Oeffentlichkeit schoenen.

Es besteht durchaus Anlass, im Auge zu behalten, ob es sich hier um eine "Frontgruppe" handelt, hinter deren humanitaerem Engagement andere, nicht offen gelegte Interessen stehen - auch wenn sie sich auf einen sehr wichtigen Grundsatz der Vereinten Nationen beruft (s.u., Schutzverantwortung).

Erfahrungsberichte von Kunden zu FIRST AVENUE CONSULTING LIMITED

Hier sind noch keine Daten vorhanden...

http://www.brandigg.de/unternehmen/FIRST-AVENUE-CONSULTING-LIMITED

Schade ...

Von der Webseite der Vereinten Nationen zum Thema
Schutzerantwortung/ „Responsibility to Protect“

Background Information on the Responsibility to ProtectFrom humanitarian intervention to the responsibility to protect (2001)

The expression "responsibility to protect" was first presented in the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), set up by the Canadian Government in December 2001. The Commission had been formed in response to Kofi Annan's question of when the international community must intervene for humanitarian purposes. Its report, "The Responsibility to Protect," found that sovereignty not only gave a State the right to "control" its affairs, it also conferred on the State primary "responsibility" for protecting the people within its borders. It proposed that when a State fails to protect its people — either through lack of ability or a lack of willingness — the responsibility shifts to the broader international community.

Report of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (2004)

In 2004, the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, set up by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, endorsed the emerging norm of a responsibility to protect — often called "R2P" — stating that there is a collective international responsibility, "exercisable by the Security Council authorizing military intervention as a last resort, in the event of genocide and other large-scale killing, ethnic cleansing and serious violations of humanitarian law which sovereign governments have proved powerless or unwilling to prevent." The panel proposed basic criteria that would legitimize the authorization of the use of force by the UN Security Council, including the seriousness of the threat, the fact that it must be a last resort, and the proportionality of the response.

Report of the Secretary-General: In larger freedom (2005)

In his report "In larger freedom," Secretary-General Kofi Annan "strongly agreed" with the approach outlined by the High-level Panel and suggested that a list of proposed criteria — including seriousness of the threat, proportionality and chance of success — be applied for the authorization of the use of force in general.

United Nations World Summit (2005)

In September 2005, at the United Nations World Summit, all Member States formally accepted the responsibility of each State to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. At the Summit, world leaders also agreed that when any State fails to meet that responsibility, all States (the "international community") are responsible for helping to protect people threatened with such crimes. Should peaceful means — including diplomatic, humanitarian and others — be inadequate and national authorities "manifestly fail" to protect their populations, the international community should act collectively in a "timely and decisive manner" — through the UN Security Council and in accordance with the UN Charter — on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with regional organizations as appropriate.
http://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/rwanda/about/bgresponsibility.shtml

Siehe auch
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzverantwortung

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Ruanda, eine vermeidbare Tragoedie

Rwanda, une tragédie évitable                    
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x13b08_rwanda-une-tragedie-evitable_news

Ein sehr informativer und eindrucksvoller, teilweise schwer zu ertragender Film von Patrick de Lamalle und Isabelle Christiaens (in franzoesischer Sprache), der auch auf geschichtliche Hintergruende eingeht.
Gezeigt werden auch historische Aufnahmen von Schaedelvermessungen, mit denen konstruierte fundamentale Unterschiede zwischen Tutsi und Hutu pseudowissenschaftlich (eugenisch) begruendet wurden.

Schaedelvermessung, ein Ritual der Eugenik:
Siehe auch auf dem Blog "Menschenrechte statt Eugenik", z.B.
http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/03/francis-galton-seine-forschung-in.html
http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2014/01/prost-neujahr.html




Historisch: Kraniometrie im belgischen Ruanda
Bild gefunden auf
http://www.lasalle.edu/~mcinneshin/303/
wk14/images/week14_measuring%20a%20hamite.jpg