Guerrillas in the mist - media misrepresentation of Rwanda

Washington Monthly, Sept, 1994 by Ken Silverstein

With the end of the Cold War, Africa's difficulties are now largely a depressing distraction. That means that barring brutal warfare, a natural disaster, or widespread famine, the continent rarely registers on the American media's radar screen. And even when those kinds of calamities occur, news reports often willfully ignore the human dimensions to focus on whatever impact the disaster might have on a topic that interests Americans.

This was absurdly true in the case of coverage of the fighting and dying in Rwanda over the last few years. Now that the human misery, disease, and death in that country are of an incalculable scale, attention is centered on the Rwandans. But for a long time, the media's coverage of the civil war in that country slighted human beings and focused almost entirely on a cuddlier subject: Dian Fossey's apes.

Warfare broke out in Rwanda in late 1990, when the now triumphant guerrillas of the largely Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded the country from neighboring Uganda. Their goal was to topple Juvenal Habyarimana's repressive Hutu-dominated government, which was installed in a 1973 military coup. American journalists were largely unmoved by the dramatic events taking place in the country. Between January of 1991 and December of 1993, a few months before the recent upsurge in violence, 7he New York Times ran 10 stories on Rwanda, half of them brief wire service dispatches. The Washington Post didn't have a single story on Rwanda during that period, while The Wall Street Journal ran a grand total of four sentences in three one-paragraph filler items.

However, the press has rigorously covered the saga of Rwanda's endangered mountain apes, which were made famous in Gorillas in the Mist, the 1988 movie starring Sigourney Weaver as Fossey, the murdered American researcher. A mid-June Nexis search which cross-referenced Rwanda with "gorillas" vs. "guerrillas" resulted in a rout by the apes, 1, 123 to 138. And 91 of the references to the humans had come since April 6, when the downing of Habyarimana's plane outside Kigali touched off the terrible crisis that has since been in the headlines.

The clearest way to demonstrate the press' ape obsession is to compare events in Rwanda during the 1991 to 1993 period with the coverage of country that was provided by American newspapers.

Events, 1991: George Bush increased U.S. aid to Rwanda to $15 million, up from $9 million previous year. Habyarimana's government received far more important support from France which deployed combat troops to Rwanda after war with the RPF began. According to journalist Frank Smyth, the French also rushed in advisers helicopter parts, mortars, and munitions.

The war led to increased human rights violations. "Dozens of members of the minority Tutsi ethnic group, including possible prisoners of conscience, were detained," says Amnesty International's annual report for 1991. There were reports of torture and |disappearances.' Hundreds of extra-judicial executions by members of the security forces and vigilante groups were reported."

Seeking to defuse the crisis, Habyarimana announced a series of political reforms. In mid-year, the constitution was amended to replace the existing one-party state with a multi-party system. Nine new political parties formed in anticipation of elections scheduled for 1992.

Press coverage: Despite the outbreak of warfare, journalists early in the year emitted hopeful signs about Rwanda's future. The cause for optimism was that scientists had reported an increase in the population of mountain gorillas to 306, up from 242 in 1981.

A brief January 20 dispatch in the Orlando Sentinel Tribune said conservationists were "heartened by the most recent census of mountain gorillas, the animals slain scientist Dian Fossey tried to protect." The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on the encouraging trend on April 17, when a renowned ape researcher mentioned it during a lecture at a local university. Possibly because editors felt the country's story was hopelessly complicated, neither of these articles mentioned that there was a war taking place in Rwanda.

Optimism turned to gloom in mid-year, as spreading warfare was deemed a threat to Rwanda's apes. "Observers fear the gunfire is disrupting [the gorillas'] routine and threatening [their] long-term welfare," cautioned a May 26, 1991, story in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. In the one ray of hope, the newspaper said that while the insurgency had brought an end to tourist activities at Rwanda's Kagera National Park, "gorilla tours still are available where the park enters into Zaire."

Events, 1992: Casualties mounted with hum rights groups reporting roughly 2,000 civilian killed in the fighting and hundreds of others rape or tortured. In one particularly bloody incident 150 Tutsi were killed and many other injured during a March attack by pro-government groups of armed Hutu. Western weaponry poured in, mostly from France but including $2.3 million in anus bought from the United States. Mass demonstrations early in the year led Habyarimana to appoint opposition leader Dismas Nsengiyaremye as Prime Minister. The latter's national unity government was shaken in November when Justice Minister Stanislas Mbonampeka resigned his post, citing a lack of cooperation from security forces.