Parliament adopts media bill, excludes genocide clauses

Following three years of heated debate, the Rwandan parliament has cleared a bill that, if approved by the Supreme Court and President Paul Kagame, should provide the country with greater media freedom.

"The issues that were hampering the progress of its final stages have been addressed," James Vuningoma, head of the Association of Rwandan Journalists, told IRIN on Wednesday.

He said that the bill would authorise the operation of local private radio and television stations and news agencies. If a standard legislative time frame was observed, he said, the bill could become law within a month. Measures to liberalise the media were taking place now, he said, because of Rwanda's "political and economic evolution and need to dialogue". The bill also provides for the creation of a media council made up of government appointees, as well as representatives from private media.

Another major development was exclusion from the bill of three controversial articles that would have imposed long-term prison and death sentences for those found guilty of inciting genocide. While journalists and politicians generally agreed that anti-genocide legislation pertaining to the use of the media was necessary, media representatives objected to the way it was being proposed.

"There is no country in the world that has experienced genocide that has not instituted such laws," Vuningoma had told IRIN earlier, "but a consensus has been reached among those in our profession that such legislation should be incorporated in a body of genocide law, and not in a law pertaining solely to journalists."

Rwanda did not have laws on genocide occurring after December 1994, he said, leaving "a vacuum as to where to put such laws", and fuelling a sense of urgency among legislators to get something on the books.

The three articles in question provided for a 20-year life term for anyone found guilty of intending to use the media to incite people to violence; a death sentence for anyone found guilty of using the media to incite genocide; the prohibition return to Rwanda for anyone found guilty of using the media to incite genocide from outside the country. However, Vuningoma said, this last article would have been invalid under international law since it would have effectively rendered a Rwandan individual stateless.

Between April and June 1994, about 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed by extremist Hutu elements of the public and government, including the Hutu Interahamwe militias and the country's former armed forces. Many journalists were killed in the genocide, in which some propagandists participated actively by encouraging the mass slaughter.