Fourteen years after the Rwandan genocide we are again reminded about the varied ways in which popular culture and technology can be utilized to spread hatred and violence with the sentencing of Simon Bikindi. As reported:

Presiding Judge Monica Weinberg de Roca said Tuesday that Simon Bikindi used a public address system to tell Hutus to exterminate Tutsi “snakes” and wrote hate-filled propaganda in his lyrics.

“You have abused your stature as a well-known and popular artist … and an important figure in the Interahamwe movement by using your influence to incite genocide,” she said. The Interahamwe were militants from the Hutu ethnic majority.

***

They often used radio as a means of urging Hutu civilians to kill their Tutsi neighbors and direct the slaughter. Bikindi’s songs called on Hutus to remember the suffering under the Tutsi monarchy and urged Hutus to remain united against the “Tutsi enemy.”

To place this in a larger context, during the Rwandan genocide there was a debate within the Clinton Administration as to whether or not to jam the radio waves to stop the spread of violence. The airwaves were being used to target and kill the Tutsi. At the time only the United States had the technology to block the radio transmissions. It was decided, however, that a state’s sovereignty was paramount and that the U.S. should not interfere with the Rwandan airwaves.

In fact, the United States refused to share the technology with other countries or even the United Nations in order for them to intervene. What if the messages of hate — and later the lists of people to kill — being read over the airwaves of the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) had been stopped? How many lives could have been saved? In retrospect one wonders whether or not the international community would allow the same decision to be made today.