Editor, RE: "The philosophy behind HRW’s blatant falsehoods on Rwanda” (The New Times, October 21).

"In reality HRW plays the role of missionaries of yore; soften up the colonialists’ targets for the final assault under the amorphous pretext of human rights and the even more conveniently indefinable doctrine of Responsibility to protect”. So succinctly put. Yours is a calling, Mwene Kalinda. Go forth.

Ggwanga Mujje*************************** Well said Mwene Kalinda. The name HRW is a cover to hide interests of the master colonialists. And it is very sad the so called international media such as Reuters, BBC grip unverified reports with shouting titles full of lies.

We no longer respect these media because they have failed even to practice the basic principles of journalism. They are just biased and their role is to deep in what they are fed for some interests.

Shame on such media—Human Rights Watch is clearly exposed in the case regarding Rwanda.

Philips Kyambade*************************** The mistake we make is in believing there ever was a Golden Age of Western journalism; it is a very excellently constructed legend. Media has always been a propaganda tool of governments or wealthy plutocrats or social classes.

Why else do you think a large proportion of the (mainly Western) media that so many of our people (very wrongly) think of as the epitome of credibility are in fact either owned by their governments or government-influenced?

Among all these that too many Africans turn to for ‘the truth’ are the BBC, VOA, France24, France Inter, Deutsche Welle, Voice of Canada, Japan’s Nihon Hosyo Kyokai aka NHK, AFP (Agence France-Presse), and many more, all of which are running on public funding. Others too have jumped on the bandwagon, for instance China’s CCTV or CGNT, Qatar’s Al-Jazeera, Russia’s RT, etc.

All these governments do not invest the billions required to create and maintain powerful media empires merely for the pleasure, but to shape perceptions about global developments in ways favourable to their interests, not necessarily truthfully. Even ostensibly private media houses are part of the same constellation of influence of Western countries, individually or collectively.

Of course, the danger is not that they do it; it is that too many of our people are unconscious that we are being played and our minds become occupied territories. Sooner or later under their ‘truthful’ media’s sustained and insidious assault we internalize their narratives as the truth and begin to ourselves espouse the views they want us to accept of the world, even when this is not true or in our own interest.

Like their media, the work of such organizations as HRW, Amnesty International and many other so-called non-governmental organizations, is, contrary to appearances, closely intertwined with their governments’ geopolitical interests and strategies to promote them. Behind the curtain many of their respective actions are closely coordinated to ensure appropriate complementarity. Again, too many of our people fail to understand this basic reality, seeing only the misleading surface they are encouraged to fixate on.

We all need to continuously educate ourselves and our fellow Africans to open our inner senses to understand how we keep on being played without being aware of the fact.

Mwene Kalinda