Rwanda: The Untold Story": questions for the BBC
ANDREW WALLIS 6 October 2014
A deeply flawed BBC documentary on Rwanda's genocide raises serious questions over the corporation's ethics and standards.
"There is no reasonable basis for anyone to dispute that, during 1994, there was a campaign of mass killing intended to destroy, in whole or at least in very large part, Rwandas Tutsi population
That campaign was, to a terrible degree, successful; although exact numbers may never be known, the great majority of Tutsis were murdered, and many others were raped or otherwise harmed." [International Criminal Court for Rwanda, 16 June 2006]
It is not often a documentary comes along that totally reattributes the historical reality of a genocide in a mere one hour. Indeed the BBC programme Rwanda: the Untold Story, broadcast at prime-time on 1 October 2014, managed this in a record ten-minute section of its airtime. Twenty years of scholarly research by academics such as Gérard Prunier, Linda Melvern, Mahmood Mamdani,Howard Adelman, Jean-François Dupaquier, Jean-Pierre Chrétien and Allan Thompson (to name just a few) was pushed aside.
Thousands of witness interviews for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), archived documents and judgements were made equally redundant. So were many official reports by the United Nations Security Council in 1994 and 1999; the African Union; and human-rights groups - especially the landmark work by Alison des Forges at Human Rights Watch and Rakiya Omarat African Rights.
Instead, the BBC entrusted the exposure of the "true" story of the genocide to two American academics, Allan Stam and Christian Davenport, who had travelled to Rwanda in 1998 and found everyone they spoke to telling the same story about the genocide. This, they decided, was not because people were recounting what had actually happened but because they had been brainwashed or frightened into a massive cover-up.
Standing in front of a scientific-looking multi-coloured "results" map of Rwanda, they flashed up impressively scientific-looking statistics of troop movements across Rwanda in 1994 to prove their point. In essence, they alleged that instead of 800,000 Tutsi deaths there were only around 200,000. Even more incredibly, they proposed at least 800,000 Hutus had been killed at the hands of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), as they pushed the genocidal Rwandan army and Hutu militias from the country. The accepted death-toll figures by researchers such as Gérard Prunier, Alison des Forges and Marijke Verpootens forensic examination in 2005 are simply dismissed. As indeed are all legal judgments from the ICTR where hundreds of investigators, scholars and acute legal minds have worked for two decades.
Edward Herman and David Peterson were to use the "results" in their book The Politics of Genocide, published in 2010. It was swiftly discredited by scholars who ridiculed both the methodology of the research and its suspected underlying motivation. For example, Gerry Caplan, author of the African Union report Rwanda: the preventable genocide, criticised Herman and Peterson as being part of an ideologically driven core of genocide-deniers, genocide-revisers and opponents of the current Rwandan government. The main aim of this small group, Caplan argued, was to shift the blame for the tragedy to theirbête noir Paul Kagame, the current Rwandan leader, who has become for them (and some western media) a figure of intense, almost pathological, dislike. The BBC film certainly reflects this view.
The constant thread throughout the hour-long film was the desire to denigrate Kagame, through a cast-list of eight long-time enemies of the Rwandan leader. There was no balancing view, no attempt to analyse in depth or understand the history that brought Rwanda to the events of 1994. Instead viewers were treated to crushing tabloid accusations, pithy soundbites from the selected group of carefully chosen interviewees, sly insinuations and slo-mo shots of the Rwandan leader looking suitably diabolical. There was no new "untold" evidence to back up claims. Here was a chance for the highly complex, emotionally-charged Rwandan story to be considered on prime-time television. Instead it was reduced to a good vs evil parody that left anyone with knowledge of the country and its history, who surely included many genocide survivors in Europe, with a feeling of frank disbelief and anger.
What's untold
The event many see as the trigger for the genocide is the shooting down of the plane of President Juvenal Habyarimana on 6 April 1994. The film's cursory "explanation" for what happened was based on the claim by a single RPF defector, now in France, that he heard Kagame order the destruction of the plane. The programme also cited the report by French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, published in 2006. This report has long since been derided for relying on half a dozen Rwandan defectors, many of whom swiftly went public to say that their statements had been corrupted to meet Bruguière's requirements, and that they had been promised French visas should they comply with his wishes. Wikileaks subsequently showed Bruguières none-too-subtle political agenda. The judge is currently under investigation for perjury, withholding evidence and obstruction of justice in other cases he handled.
Unsurprisingly, there is no mention of the more recent independent and meticulous report in 2012 by the investigating judge Marc Trévidic that showedclearly the missiles were fired from an area controlled by extremist Hutu units of the presidential guard; nor of research in 2008 by the UKs Cranfield University that came to the same conclusion. Instead another academic is extensively cited: the Belgian professor and vociferous opponent of Kagame, Filip Reyntjens. Again, no mention of the fact that he was a long-term advisor to Habyarimana and has not been in Rwanda for twenty years. All this is a mockery of supposed investigative journalism.
The two main beneficiaries of the film are high-profile RPF defectors: Theogene Rudasingwa and General Kayumba Nyamwasa. Their views are unchallenged and taken, in effect, as gospel. No attempt is made to explore their own backgrounds and current political ambitions. Nyamwasa was head of Rwanda's army after the genocide, and was accused both of trying to build a separate power-base within the military and of involvement in a series of corruption scams and illegal land-grabs while in office. Rudasingwa was said to be implicated in a lucrative financial scam while employed in the office of the president. Rwandas zero tolerance of corruption, as witnessed byTransparency International, makes it unsurprising that both fled the country rather than face the charges against them. The two men, along with two other defectors (Patrick Karegeya and Gerald Gahima), founded an opposition party in exile, the Rwanda National Congress [RNC], in 2010 aimed at unseatingKagame.
Nyamwasas RNC is alleged to be allied to the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda [FDLR] in the borderlands of eastern DRC and Rwanda. The FDLR is made up of many genocidaire who fled to the region after the RPF pushed them from Rwanda, and has become synonymous with terrorising the local population over the past fifteen years, including the mass rape and murder of tens of thousands of innocent civilians. Its leader Sylvestre Mudacumura iswanted at the ICC for gross human-rights violations. FDLR atrocities inside Rwanda in recent years have left scores dead and injured from grenade attacks, with the RNC implicated in assisting funding and supply of arms to the group. Both Nyamwasa and Rudasingwa were sentenced in their absence by Rwandan courts - in Nyamwasas case not to life imprisonment (as the film affirms) but to twenty-four years for corruption, misuse of office, and threatening state security. Rudasingwa was given the same sentence in absentia.
The film features numerous such factual inaccuracies, misleading generalisations and omissions. There is no mention of the genocidal pogroms that caused hundred of thousands of Tutsis to flee between 1959 and 1972-73; nor of the fact that the RPF chose a military path back into Rwanda in 1990 precisely because Habyarimana had consistently blocked the peaceful return of the refugees to their homeland; nor of the genocidal massacres of thousands of Tutsis in 1990-93 by Habyarimanas army and militia. The two terribleCongolese wars (1996-97, 1998-2003) are explained in a few short sentences though the motivation of the belligerents involved the highly complex interplay of six countries and dozens of militias, and originated in the border camps that were filled with genocidaire as well as innocent Hutu refugees. Both United Nations and Amnesty International reports have testified that these camps had become a launchpad for a planned re-invasion by the genocidal interim government and its forces.
What next?
The ethics of the BBC programme makers are extremely questionable. There was no evident attempt to talk to Tutsi survivors or survivor groups. The Rwandan organiser who assisted the film crew in practical arrangements was told it was purely a film about the twentieth commemoration; months afterwards he was called suddenly by the BBC producer, told the film was highly controversial, his life could be in danger, and that he should flee. The very serious implication is that the documentary makers were prepared to put his life, and that of his wife and children, in danger, without ever mentioning this to him until too late.
The site director of the genocide memorial at Murambi, Gaspard Mukwiye - who tends the place and the memories of its 50,000 Tutsi victims, and is himself a Tutsi survivor - was also persuaded into taking part in a film that effectively denied his acute suffering and personal loss, still vividly etched on his face. It should be noted the "repressive" regime the film portrayed gave the BBC complete open access to its media archives and to film wherever and whatever it wanted.
The BBC has since 2006 many times reaffirmed its editorial guidelines, including that "we should do all we can to ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and impartiality in all relevant output." Viewers can make up their own minds how accurate and impartial this programme is and wonder if other genocides are next on the BBC revisionist menu, subsumed under its current obsession to "break news" and controversies. That is the best-case interpretation. It can only be hoped the corporation is not home to senior executives who actively hold malevolent views of genocide denial which they are misusing public money and privilege to promote.
Mleta maada naomba sana usome na utoe comment kwa hii story ya Wallis, naona umeikwepa weeeee kama vile hujaiona au kama vile sio important againts your posted documentary! please REJEA NA UTOE COMMENT
😡. Hii Documentary iko biased 100% kwani walioulizwa wote na ambao wametoa shutuma dhidi ya Kagame hakuna hata mmoja ambaye yuko Neutral, kila mmoja ana sababu zake; Andrew Wallis amekuonyesha how. by the way the Guy is one of prominent researcher ambaye ameonyesha kasoro zilizomo kwenye hii documentary in fact it lacks Ethics za uandishi wa habari.
"The ethics of the BBC programme makers are extremely questionable. There was no evident attempt to talk to Tutsi survivors or survivor groups. The Rwandan organiser who assisted the film crew in practical arrangements was told it was purely a film about the twentieth commemoration; months afterwards he was called suddenly by the BBC producer, told the film was highly controversial, his life could be in danger, and that he should flee. The very serious implication is that the documentary makers were prepared to put his life, and that of his wife and children, in danger, without ever mentioning this to him until too late."
The BBC has since 2006 many times reaffirmed its editorial guidelines, including that "we should do all we can to ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and impartiality in all relevant output." It was not done that way, by Interviwing
Kayumba, Theogene, Reyntjens or other fugitive only, on issues about Kagame it demontrated the bias ness of it
By the way here is another link from the same BBC for you Mr.JMali:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-16472013
[h=1]Rwanda genocide: Kagame 'cleared of Habyarimana crash'[/h]
Continue reading the main story [h=2]Rwanda: Haunted Nation[/h]
A report has appeared to clear Rwanda's President Paul Kagame of orchestrating the 1994 assassination of the country's then-leader Juvenal Habyarimana.
The team - mandated by a French inquiry - visited the scene of the attack to work out the trajectory of the missile which shot down his plane.
The crash was one of the triggers that sparked the genocide.
An earlier French probe blamed Mr Kagame and his allies, but they say Hutu extremists killed Habyarimana.
Rwanda's government has welcomed the conclusions of this new report.
The plane crash on 6 April 1994 - in which Habyarimana and Burundi's leader died - triggered the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in just 100 days.
The killings came to an end when the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriot Front (RPF) rebel movement, headed by Mr Kagame, captured Rwanda's capital, Kigali.
Elite presidential troops
Continue reading the main story [h=2]Analysis[/h]
Hugh Schofield BBC News, Paris
This is an important development in the row over the Habyarimana assassination, because it removes much of the force from the theory that he was killed by President Paul Kagame's then RPF rebels. The emergence of this theory - and then the support it received from France's leading anti-terrorist judge - caused a total diplomatic breakdown between Paris and Kigali.
In the Rwandan capital, it was widely believed that the judge was under government instructions to implicate Mr Kagame's men in order to deflect attention from France's own alleged guilt in the 1994 massacres. There is no evidence of that. But it is true that claims about RPF involvement were based mainly on the evidence of defectors, which could not be seen as reliable.
The new technical report - ordered by a new judge - appears to be based on much more solid evidence. The experts say the missile that downed President Habyarimana's jet must have come from his own army camp. In other words, it must have been fired by Hutu extremists. That is exactly the version that President Kagame has always upheld.
If the report ends up exculpating the associates of Mr Kagame named in the investigation, there will be much relief in Kigali. Probably in the French foreign ministry too.
Correspondents say the court on Tuesday concluded that the missile was shot from a distance of up to 1km (more than half a mile) away from the plane, which was about to land at Kigali airport.
At the time this area was held by the Rwandan army - a unit of elite presidential troops.
The experts say it would be very difficult for forces loyal to Mr Kagame to be in this area and therefore shoot down the plane.
They concluded that it would have been much easier for Habyarimana's troops or French troops who were in the area to launch the missile.
In 2006, a French judge accused Mr Kagame and his allies of killing Habyarimana - an allegation he dismissed as "ridiculous" and which prompted him to break off relations with Paris for three years.
Five years later, in 2011, a former senior ally of the president Theogene Rudasingwa - the RPF's secretary general and a major at the time of the genocide -
also accused Mr Kagame. Mr Rudasingwa fell out with the president and now lives in exile in the US.
Mr Kagame has always insisted that Hutu hardliners - who considered Habyarimana too moderate - shot down the plane and blamed the RPF to provide a pretext for carrying out the premeditated slaughter.
Critics of the 2006 investigation said it failed to visit the area of the attack, or interview the nine high-ranking RPF officers it accused of involvement. It said the missile was shot from a distance of four kilometres away from the airport.
French judge Marc Trevidic headed this latest French inquiry, launched - with the full co-operation of the Rwandan authorities - towards the end of 2010 because the French crew of the plane also died.
The team has interviewed six of those accused in the 2006 report and conducted a forensic investigation. Two missiles specialists, two air accident experts, a pilot, two surveyors and a sound expert have reconstructed the sequence of the attack.
'Unhappy' Following this report, Judge Trevidic can either drop the affair or continue his investigations, which could result in a court case.
"Today's findings constitute vindication for Rwanda's long-held position on the circumstances surrounding events of April 1994," Rwanda's Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said in a statement.
The lawyer for the Habyarimana family said they are unhappy about the report's conclusions - questioning the credibility of the experts - and they still want someone to be found guilty.
"It does not matter where the shooting took place," Habyarimana's son Jean-Luc told the BBC's Great Lakes service.
"What matters is who fired the missile," he said.
Habyarimana's widow, Agathe, told the BBC that she wanted the French inquiry to find out who had bought the allegedly Russian missile that hit the plane - because that would help to identify those behind the attack.
Rwanda has historically been beset by ethnic tension. It worsened under Belgian colonial rule when the Tutsi minority enjoyed better jobs and better education than the Hutu majority.
At independence, following inter-ethnic violence, many thousands of Tutsis went into exile in Uganda from where they eventually launched a civil war in 1990.
A 1993 peace agreement was supposed to usher in a power-sharing government - but it did little to stop the unrest.
[h=2][/h]
