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?

Cases for Discussion CAMBODIA RWANDA KOSOVO BURUNDI

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

Map of Cambodia and Its Neighbors

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

Commando SoloC-130 Hercules

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”?

Contact Information

Prof. Frank Chalk

E-mail: drfrank@alcor.concordia.ca

URL: http://migs.concordia.ca