The Guyana Government owns and operates Radio Rwanda

Nov 07, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There are four gruesome depictions of the Hutu genocide against the Tutsi people in Rwanda in 1994. These are depressing movies that I would advise people not to see if they can avoid the viewing.
The genocide against the Tutsis now ranks alongside the Holocaust. These are the two most cruel forms of inter-personal violence in the history of human civilization. For me, the Tutsis genocide was more bestial in conduct than the German annihilation of European Jewry.
The most famous of the four is Hotel Rwanda. But I will rank the other three above that. They are the BBC’s great effort, Shooting Dogs (also named Beyond the Gates), Shake Hands with the Devil, and Sometimes in the April. The last one is perhaps the more descriptive account that avoids diplomatic angles and philosophical niceties (unlike Hotel Rwanda) and tells the story as it occurred with a stunning vividness that may be hard to digest if you have a delicate stomach. Sometimes in April best captured the role of Radio Rwanda in bringing about the genocide of the Tutsi people. There can be no doubt that in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the power of the press was graphically highlighted.
Prime Minister Sam Hinds in justifying his Government’s inflexibility in refusing to allow Guyana to have more than one radio station said publicly (he was speaking to the press) than in having more than one radio station, we must remember what Radio Rwanda did and we don’t want that in Guyana.
Before we expose the political dishonesty in that statement, mention must be made of the enormous stupidity on the part of anyone who thinks that a radio station can do more than what television can do. We have just over 700,000 citizens and over eighty percent of them have access to television sets. There is absolutely nothing radio can do to people’s heads that television cannot.
The PPP leaders have in the most hateful way turned the Radio Rwanda nastiness on the opposition and independent press, whereas the analogy is more applicable to the PPP Government itself. For example, Donald Ramotar sat behind me at an ERC stakeholders meeting and requested that the ERC monitor the private media for incitement.
This is the Radio Rwanda label that they have been trying to pin on every media house, every editor, every commentator that exposes fascist instincts and dictatorial drives in the Government of Guyana.
What Hinds and Ramotar have obfuscated from their discussion is exactly what Radio Rwanda did, who it was broadcasting to and who was its intended victims. Radio Rwanda is alive in Guyana and it can be found in the compound of NCN and on the lawns of the Guyana Chronicle.
Radio Rwanda was a government radio station that was used by the Hutu regime to preach genocide against the opposition Tutsis. Radio broadcasters accused the Tutsis of shooting down the President’s plane.
They told Hutus that the Tutsis had done this to take over the Government. As the radio incited Hutus to kill, broadcasters began to target Hutu moderates who refused to murder their fellow countrymen.
In fact soldiers who didn’t carry out orders to kill had their names called out on the radio station. In Guyana, Radio Rwanda is not in the opposition’s hands. Radio Rwanda is constantly used by the dictators to berate and humiliate the opposition and independent-minded citizens.
You can find Radio Rwanda everyday on the pages of the Guyana Chronicle. The nastiest things are said about the PPP’s opponents on Radio Rwanda. Here are some tapes of Radio Rwanda programmes in Guyana. The day after the Lusignan massacre, Radio Rwanda reported that Mark Benschop was in the area the day before. This was not true and could have endangered the man’s life.
The nation was told that there exist tapes that prove that opposition politicians were socializing with the infamous violent gang in Buxton during the crime spree. Citizens are informed that violent men have burnt down the Ministry of Health and the names reach into the operation rooms of opposition politicians. Don’t these statements remind you of what Radio Rwanda did in 1994?
Here are some more incitements from Radio Rwanda in Guyana. NCN reported that a father attacked me and threw a substance on my face because I accosted his daughter.
Critics of the Government are constantly called nasty names by the big dictator thereby inciting PPP supporters to harm them.
There can be no question about it; as the 2011 elections draw nearer, Radio Rwanda is going to cause harm to this nation.

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The Guyana Government owns and operates Radio Rwanda

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The Guyana Government owns and operates Radio Rwanda

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