Ban of BBC-Gahuza service long overdue

Editor, Refer to Lonzen Rugira’s article, “Reactions to the BBCs sanctioning expose Western hypocrisy” (The New Times, June 15). Prior to the Liberation War in 1990, Rwanda was the same as South Africa—apartheid was evident in schools, the army, in the workplace and so on. The Tutsi were physically and psychologically segregated against and humiliated the same way black South Africans were. Between 1990 through 1994, the Rwandan media played a tremendous role in spicing up the existing constructed theory that Tutsi were foreigners who invaded Rwanda 500 years earlier and enslaved the Hutu, who were living in peace with Twa people in their motherland. The then Rwandan media constantly dehumanised Tutsi by calling them cockroaches and snakes, manipulating people that the freedom fighters were animals with big tails, very slim creatures who survive by eating cobs. Unfortunately, the BBC’s “Rwanda, Untold Story” documentary and indeed the broadcaster’s Kinyarwanda service seem to be an extension of this propaganda. The fact that Rwandans have taken steps forward without looking at anyone’s nose and height in order to judge their abilities is ignored. But listen to the BBC Kinyarwanda: the very stories that divided our nation are what they broadcast time and again. The “Imvo n’Imvano” programme remains an international network for those who deny the Genocide against the Tutsi. This service should have been suspended a long time ago—it is contradictory to its ethos of “Gahuzamiryango” (uniting people), but rather pitting them against each other. Butare ************************* Does Western hypocrisy on any issue, big or small, still have any shock value to Mr Rugira or even the most indifferent reader of history or observer of current affairs? All these sanctimoniously self-righteous givers of lessons in human rights (which they violate on an ongoing basis all across this poor globe) consider their own ability to act hypocritically a very important strategic resource. Francois Mitterrands 1994 statement, as reported by Patrick de Saint-Exupery in Le Figaro on 12 January 1998, that Dans ces pays-la, un genocide, ce nest pas trop important, reflects their own thinking. They only dint say it as loudly, in order to maintain their ability to use anti-genocide rhetoric in a strategically hypocritical manner. Every time I hear them evoke the Genocide against Rwandas Tutsi to support a bombing campaign against their latest non-Western target, it gives me a bad taste in the mouth. For as God made little apples, I know beyond doubt their humanitarian bombs have less to do with the Responsibility2Protect and is more (if not entirely) about protecting or advancing their own unspoken (and usually unspeakable) base interests. My only beef is that, no matter the lessons we should have learnt from our long and painful experience from Western perfidiousness in our dealings with them, from the slave trade, through colonialism and neo-colonialism, Africans fall for their wiles over and over again. It is as if we are genetically programmed to continue to be plucked over and over again, and still believe the pluckers next tall tale that their con is all for our own benefit, not our perdition. Talk about insanity. And those who keep on alerting fellow Africans to beware the poisoned gifts of these double-tongued inducements are often taxed, Cassandra-like, with being conspiracy purveyors or worse (in Greek mythology, Cassandra, daughter of King Priam of Troy, was given powers of prophecy by Apollo who then cursed her never to be believed when she rebuffed his seduction). And our people continue believing the manure they are continuously fed, completely oblivious to how they are being conditioned to be plucked. Mwene Kalinda

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Ban of BBC-Gahuza service long overdue