Suchergebnisse

Treball Final de Màster Universitari Internacional en Estudis de Pau, Conflictes i Desenvolupament. Codi: SAA074. Curs: 2013/2014 ; Freedom of speech and press freedom are key foundations of all human rights as stipulated in human rights declaration of 1948. Denying people the right to free speech is keeping them away from what is happening in this world, thus, hindering them from participating in decision making. While speech freedom and press freedom are key tools to measure if a country is democratically or despotically run, the right to freedom of expression in Rwanda is casualty of the horrible history of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi in which media played a great deal. Using an explanatory research design and a non probability sampling with various qualitative methods such as interviews, personal observations and discourse analysis, the study confirmed a clear collaboration between the government and hate media in perpetrating the genocide. Research findings from both the field study and literature say the government having purposely manipulated media, and consequently inducing them in fuelling the genocide. Despite that shared responsibility between the government and media, only journalists and ordinary citizens are paying the price. In an endeavour to protect the society from the recidivism of the genocide, the Government of Rwanda (GoR) instituted a number of laws including the genocide ideology law and media laws, all of which castigate discrimination and sectarianism. Human rights organizations and activists, political opponents, media and some ordinary citizens quickly started to accuse these laws of being tools for the government to silence its critics while masquerading as perpetrators of national security. Field research findings and the rich literature of the study, however, suggest that only open debates, both public and in media, can protect national security and till respect people's rights of free speech and press freedom.