(Source: The Guardian via Andy Sennitt)
The Rwandan government has suspended all BBC radio broadcasts in Rwanda’s most common language to protest against the news organisation’s recent documentary about the 1994 genocide in the country.
President Paul Kagame’s government, members of parliament and genocide survivors have expressed their anger at the BBC over the recent documentary that suggested the country’s president may have had a hand shooting down his predecessor’s plane, a crash that triggered the mass killings.
Its hour-long documentary, Rwanda, The Untold Story, also quoted US researchers who suggested that many of the more than 800,000 Rwandans who died in the 1994 genocide may have been ethnic Hutus, and not ethnic Tutsis as the Rwandan government maintains.
Late on Friday, the Rwandan Utilities Regulatory Authority announced the suspension of the BBC’s broadcasts in the local language, Kinyarwanda. The board said it took the action because it has received complaints of “incitement, hatred, divisionism, genocide denial and revision” from the public. It said further action could be taken.
The BBC had defended the film on Friday, saying it had a “duty to investigate difficult and challenging subjects”.
