ABSTRACT
During the months leading to the genocide of the Tutsi population in Rwanda, between April and June 1994, one of the strategies carried out by the Extremist Hutu government involved relying on one of the national radio channels (The Radio des Milles Collines), to instigate negative stereotypes of the Tutsis in order to justify their later destruction. Propaganda typically described Tutsis as “cockroaches,” “snakes,” or as secret agents of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), made of exiled Tutsis, which attempted to conquer the country. Given that most Rwandese citizens own a radio, this medium enabled the government to reach the whole population. Several analysts and observers (Braeckman, 1994; Dallaire & Beardsley, 2003; Franche, 2004; Hatzfeld, 2000) suggested that this strategy instigated in the Hutu population a shared sense of the necessity to destroy the out-group and of the legitimacy of such a project. If this factor alone does not explain the genocide, it appears to have played a significant role in its occurrence.
