The Power of Media in Rwanda: Sophie Tholstrup

Sophie Tholstrup is an intern with Search for Common Ground Rwanda

The Power of Media in Promoting Peace—Part 1

This summer, I was lucky enough to attend a release ceremony at Mutobo demobilization camp in northern Rwanda. The Rwanda Demobilisation and Reintegration Commission (RDRC) is responsible for the camps, which prepare combatants to return to civilian life.

After years of fighting in the eastern Congolese forests, several hundred ex-combatants had completed three months of training intended to prepare them for civilian life. That day they would return to the villages they had fled after the 1994 genocide, in order to live and work peacefully alongside neighbors of all ethnicities.

In a corrugated iron barn, the ex-combatants stood in neat rows. On command, they pumped the air with their fists and shouted in unison: “Genocide ideology: we fight it, destroy it and send it to hell!”

Most of those present today fought for the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), a militia composed largely of Hutu refugees who fled Rwanda in the final days of the 1994 genocide. Some feared retribution for committing crimes of genocide, others had been forced across the border to act as a human shield.

It is difficult to imagine these people who now laugh, dance, and sing, earnestly affirming their commitment to lead peaceful lives in the service of Rwanda–once fighting in a militia that used rape and mutilation as weapons of war and which aimed to overthrow the Rwandan government.

While some of the ex-combatants were captured and brought here by force, many chose to return to their native Rwanda voluntarily.

Brigadier General Jerome Ngendahimana, deputy commander of the recent joint operations between the Rwandan and Congolese armies, is himself a former FDLR general. He explained that the major challenge in the ongoing repatriation efforts is the misinformation propagated by genocidaires in the FDLR. FDLR commanding officers often discourage their troops from returning home, tell them that will mean imprisonment, social exile and even death.

“These people (the genocidaires) know they have much to lose if they return – they will be tried for their crimes during the genocide” he said, “so they try to keep their troops there around them, like a shield.”

Rwanda continues its repatriation efforts, using radio broadcasts as well as encouraging the recently repatriated to communicate with those still in the Congo, in hopes of countering the misinformation and convincing combatants that returning to Rwanda is a safe and viable option.

Read Part 2 here.