PUBLISHED JULY 23, 2008, EMBASSY NEWS

BUTARE, RWANDA–There has been an ongoing debate about the state of press freedom in official Ottawa since Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party formed a government in January 2006.

The increased communications control and reduced access to ministers than previous governments has left the Parliamentary Press Gallery ill at ease because of the dearth of information emerging or available from Canada’s political circles.

But accountability, transparency, and press freedom take on an entirely different meaning in Rwanda. In this African country, it’s illegal to talk about “division” and, therefore, differentiate between ethnic groups. Conversations about the 1994 genocide that killed 800,000 rarely rise above a whisper. And criticism of President Paul Kagame is unthinkable.

Rwanda was ranked 147 out of 154 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ annual survey on press freedom in 2007. This was a marked drop from 107 in 2002 when it was tied with Ethiopia. The international organization ranked Canada 18th in 2007 and the U.S. 48th. Scandinavian countries took the top spots last year.

“Rwanda was one of the top five countries world wide from which journalists fled into exile to escape death threats and violent attacks,” the 2007 RWB report concluded.

In 2005, former Toronto Star reporter Allan Thompson organized a conference at Carleton University to discuss the media’s role in the country’s 1994 genocide. That event led to the creation of the Rwanda Initiative, which Mr. Thompson envisioned as an organization to help rebuild the capacity of the Rwandan media by sending senior Canadian journalists to teach at the National University of Rwanda and to send journalism students to do internships at media outlets in Rwanda in order to understand the country and the continent better.

Approximately 75 Canadian journalists, including students, have participated in the program over the last three years, with admittedly varying results and, at times, complications arising from different expectations, cultures and hopes.

Remembering the Context

Carleton University’s Rwanda Initiative, a media capacity building organization partnered with the National University of Rwanda, held a conference-style workshop called Rwanda Now from July 7 to 11 in the southern city of Butare.

The event was designed to teach working Rwandan journalists how to “improve journalism, one story at a time” by encouraging them to move away from news based on press releases and official statements from government representatives and actually do some “story telling” in a way that captures the essence of every citizen.

The conference’s opening night keynote speaker was Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda, who’s been in jail 11 times in the last three months for speaking out against the Ugandan government.

For someone who’s been in jail as much as he has, Mr. Mwenda, interestingly, said the state is not the problem when it comes to press freedom in Rwanda. Rather, he said, the media is restricted because the Rwandan government feels there is an existential threat to its survival, as the local media played an integral role in causing the 1994 genocide of more than 800,000 Tutsis.

Mr. Mwenda said the government believes that because the media helped encourage, incite and fuel hatred 14 years ago, there needs to be a check on what journalists can and cannot say to prevent anything like the genocide from happening again.

Former Toronto Star publisher and veteran journalist John Honderich, who participated in the Rwanda Now conference as a keynote speaker and editors panel moderator, said Mr. Mwenda’s theory is a “powerful way to analyze” press freedom in Rwanda.

“I thought it was quite a powerful construct,” he told Embassy.

Still, he worries about press freedom in the small east African country of nine million people where he spent a month as an editor-in-residence at the The New Times, openly a pro-government newspaper based in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, in May 2007.

During his speech on the topic on July 9, Mr. Honderich noted that while belief in the importance of press freedom is fairly widespread, there are always attempts to limit it, even in the West. Such attempts can include things like libel and hate laws, as well as publication bans in certain court cases.

But before such limits are put in place, he said, journalists and the community as a whole need to partake in a debate or dialogue needs to take place outside the government.

“We must examine all that’s good and all that’s not,” he told a room of about 40 Rwandan journalists and international trainers, including Carleton University journalism professor and former CBC radio reporter David Tait, University of King’s College journalism professor Kelly Toughill, CBC’s The Hour associate producer Jennifer Moroz, and deputy director of NUR’s school of journalism Margaret Jjuuko.

“We can’t leave decisions to the government. It should take place in the public sector and journalists have a duty to participate in the debate.”

Technical, Political Problems

Mr. Honderich spent his month as editor-in-residence at The New Times helping to build a new web policy, planning a new website, introducing a local area network, restructuring the marketing department, working on circulation and bringing in new editorial standards.

As an example of some of the problems he tackled during that time, Mr. Honderich said the paper used to reprint stories from the Internet without attribution.

“I knew they weren’t going to stop that, and I said, ‘Let’s try something now, let’s at least attribute them. At least put where it comes from so you know where it comes from. People will get mad, but at least if they see they’re actually getting credit'” they won’t be that mad, he said. “I chose to see the glass one-quarter full. I could see all the failures in the paper, I could see all the things that didn’t come anywhere close to North American standards, but there were some things that were quite good for what they were doing.”

But while addressing such technical issues was fairly straightforward, Mr. Honderich said he was disappointed to learn that after he left, there was a slide back on his work for editorial control and independence. He said he thought that the paper “won the battle,” but later found out that the Sunday editor of The New Times had been fired “for running an unflattering photograph of the president at a gorilla-naming ceremony of all things.”

In addition, a newspaper called The Weekly Post was shut down “for no reason” five weeks after he had left Rwanda.

“I’m not sure that things, you know, they haven’t gotten better. In fact, they got worse after I left. I’m concerned,” he said.

“Am I hopeful? In a word, no. I’ve seen the way things are going.”

Mr. Honderich wrote an editorial in response to those events in the Toronto Star entitled “There is no press freedom in Rwanda,” which caused a kerfuffle in the African country, with the president’s office issuing a formal press release in reply. This was one of a few disputes that damaged the Rwanda Initiative’s relationship with The New Times and the Rwandan government.

New Times managing editor Ignatius Kabagambe explained at the conference earlier this month that while The New Times was a private enterprise and not owned by the Rwandan government, it “was founded by people who had vested interests in the government.” The founders were part of the movement of Rwandan refugees who grew up in Uganda and fought to come back to their homes after the genocide. President Kagame led this fight.

Mr. Kabagambe said aligning the paper with the government and its policies is something the paper’s owners and reporters are proud of, but stressed that it is still an independent operation.

“If we were not independent, we would not be able to do what we want to do, because we do what we want to do. We write the kinds of stories we want,” he said, adding that when it does come to any kind of criticism against the government, “We know how to go around it. We know how to say something in a certain way.”

Frank Kagabo, a 25-year-old reporter for The New Times, told Embassy that foreigners don’t necessarily understand the local media situation and therefore unfairly compare Rwanda with other countries.

“Sometimes they look at the situation at home and they compare with the situation here and they think, ‘Oh they’re not moving,’ but these are different societies. Apart from the media, other aspects of life, maybe the economy, the politics, they are also apart. There is a gap between them. I think it’s better to put all of these things into context. Look at the history we’ve just come from recently. This is a post-conflict country, Canada isn’t. So it’s different,” Mr. Kagabo said.

While there is a “perception” of a lack of freedom of the press, Mr. Kagabo said, there are many news outlets in Rwanda and anyone can start a paper when they want to.

“I think certainly it’s there, but there is an interest in ensuring that the media do not repeat the mistakes, or people practicing in the media do not make the mistakes, that were made during the genocide. So it’s very important,” he said. “There are things in Canada you do that you can’t do here, there are things here that you can’t do in Canada. It’s just like that.”

Mr. Thompson, who also teaches journalism at Carleton University and first went to Rwanda in 1996 to cover the aftermath of the genocide, acknowledges that “the media culture and the political culture are vastly different between Canada and Rwanda,” especially given the role the media played in the genocide.

“It’s hard to get away from the fact that this is a post-genocide society. How many countries in the world are in this situation? So, yes, all of the critique of the media climate is all true, all accurate to my mind, but it always has to be framed in the context of the genocide,” he said.

“Their fears might be misguided, but I do think there are a few people who feel as if it’s too big a risk and that their society isn’t ready for a completely wide-open media, that it could possibly lead to a complete change and even a reversal, in fact, where extremists might be able to gain a foothold.”

However, Mr. Thompson told Embassy that’s no excuse for the way the government conducts itself and for the restrictions that are put in place on journalists.

“My personal view is that they should gradually allow more and more openness and that [will] be the best remedy. Instead there seems to be some evidence that it’s going in the other direction.”

Still, Mr. Thompson said he is “sympathetic to people who do take exception to foreigners coming here for a few weeks and then criticizing the local situation.”

Following Mr. Honderich’s editorial and President Kagame’s response, Mr. Thompson waited out the situation to see if there would be any formal action, but there was none.

“In the context of the larger project, we’re still contributing to journalism education and training and those are things Rwanda wants, so isn’t there a balance there? Isn’t part of what we’re aiming for is to get to the part where the government can absorb some criticism the way governments in Canada do? So that’s been difficult, but never really more than subtle signals, some messages from officials, concerns that were raised from some of the trainers wrote in their blogs or newspaper editorials they wrote, but it never culminated in anything so, it just carries on,” he said.

“Most of the journalists I meet here are like journalists everywhere. They really want to do this job, they want to make a difference, they want to contribute. When you listen to these question and answer sessions, there is a really genuine sense of how can we improve as journalists, how can we get a better environment in our country? So I think it’s important for outsiders to try and make a contribution.”

In an editorial on July 10, The New Times said the Rwanda Initiative shot itself in the foot several times last year and made “wrong analyses” but recognized the value of the capacity building aspect of the project, something it said it welcomed.

“Rwanda Initiative is quickly shedding off that image of ‘just another NGO’ here present, without real impact on society and probably dangerous, by putting together a plan and resources that will make a difference,” the editorial read.

Preparing for the Future

Mr. Thompson is confident his attempts to bring Canadian journalists to Rwanda has helped raised the African country’s profile, as well as global awareness in general, amidst Canada’s media circles.

“The main reason we failed utterly to cover the Rwandan genocide in 1994 was because we simply didn’t understand what was going on. We had not paid any attention to Rwanda, to central Africa, we had no context, we had no interest and, frankly, even when we did start to get more information and more understanding, we didn’t even care. We still didn’t care about what was happening, and that includes journalists. I didn’t care enough in 1994 to demand to Mr. Honderich that I should be sent to Rwanda. That’s been a big part of it.”

While Mr. Honderich was concerned about press freedom in Rwanda, he was more hopeful about capacity building among the country’s journalists.

“I think what you’ll see here is that the capacity is not at a high level, and if we can elevate that, so to take away the excuse that journalism is not practiced at a high level, than we’ve really achieved something, and I think that’s what we’ve got to do now and that’s different. That’s just learning, and doing.”

Now, with about 75 Canadian journalists having journeyed to Rwanda to contribute to the rebuilding of the African country’s media, Mr. Thompson said he hopes to shift the Initiative’s focus to Rwandan journalists going to Canada to get some training in professional newsrooms, as well as having more training workshops in Rwanda, such as Rwanda Now.

He said many of the journalists in Rwanda have no formal journalistic training and lack professional skills. “They lack some of the things that a lot of North American journalists take for granted,” he said, noting such things as the lack of use of recorders and interviewing techniques.

Mr. Kagabo is one of the journalists who had no formal training before he started at The New Times. He said he studied political science at Makerere University in Uganda and worked at the campus newspaper. When he decided to move to Rwanda, he said, a friend of his who also worked at The New Times helped him get a job there. He said he wanted to attend the Rwanda Now conference to gain practical skills and said the workshop was “quite interesting.”

“You get an opportunity to meet people with diverse backgrounds, people who have been in the media for so long, others who have managed newspapers and others who are just learning, so you learn a lot of things. You get to raise the challenges that you meet as you continue in your career. I think it’s quite rewarding in terms of intellectual growth. We’ve heard from a lot of people who demonstrated a lot of intellectual issues, not just in media, but social, political and economic issues,” he said. “Secondly, I think by people putting in resources and moving all the way here, I don’t think there’s much for Canadians to gain from Rwanda in terms of material or whatever, so that tells me that it’s a genuine effort to improve journalism in Rwanda.”

Although Mr. Kabagame has a bachelors degree in mass communications, he said he joined The New Times as managing editor quickly after graduating from Makerere University. He said he should have had more training in managing a newspaper before starting his job.

He told the Rwanda Now conference participants that he is moving to Ottawa this fall to begin the masters of journalism program at Carleton University. “I’m the managing editor of the top Rwandan paper, a daily, and I’m going to study journalism,” he said. “I should have had the training before I got this position.”

Mr. Thompson feels strongly about the success of the media capacity building and exchange between Canada and Rwanda. If the Rwanda Initiative were to end today, Mr. Thompson said, it would be considered a success.

“Seventy-five Canadian journalists have had this experience. They will present Africa differently to a Canadian audience because of the experience they had with the Rwanda Initiative. Dozens of Rwandan journalists have been exposed to a higher level of professional training and journalism education than would’ve been the case without this project,” he said. “I think surely among all those people who have been apart of this exchange, there has to have been a benefit, even if it hasn’t dramatically changed the media situation in Rwanda. I think it plants the seed, and you know, we take for granted what has developed in Canada over the course of more than 100 years. It’s an evolution, and it can be quite gradual. But I still think that it’s positive, and that it is making a difference.”

The Hill Times assistant deputy editor Bea Vongdouangchanh is a part-time masters of journalism student at Carleton University and is currently in Rwanda as part of the internship program of the Rwanda Initiative. She will be working at The New Times in Kigali for July and August.