The caution comes in the wake of a massive emergence of Youtube-based media channels, online radio stations and blogs
Twenty-seven years after the Genocide against the Tutsi, authorities are urging caution over proliferation of hate speech enabled by Internet-based media outlets and digital platforms in the country and abroad.
The warning comes in the wake of a massive emergence of Youtube-based media channels, online radio stations, blogs and other digital platforms which authorities fault for providing space to deniers and revisionists.
For instance, the commission for the fight against genocide (CNLG) says its analysis of content aired on different YouTube channels and other online platforms found a number of them to promote rhetoric amounting to propagating the genocide ideology, denial and trivialization.
The commission did not give names in a statement released ahead of this year’s commemoration. However, its officials allude to local upcoming platforms accused of equally promoting divisions, undermining public order and inciting the masses into civil unrest.
The concerns are shared by the national unity and reconciliation commission (NURC) which lists hate and division propagated through different digital platforms by revisionists as key impediment to unity 27 years after the genocide against the Tutsi.
“There some content that need to be monitored closely or be warned, beside there is a long list of platforms operated by diaspora groups whose agenda is to propagate lies and negate the genocide.
In the latter case, we need to enhance provision of the true versions of our country’s history, that enable the general public to have some level of critical thinking and judgement,” Fidele Ndayisaba, NURC Executive Secretary told Rwanda Today.
Despite evidence indicating that local access to some opposition-run platforms such as blogs and news websites accused of pushing misleading theories about the genocide have been blocked, most remain active among the diaspora and have migrated on social media and YouTube where they disseminate live and pre-recorded radio shows, organize demonstrations and other activities.
The existence of the platforms has been cited by authorities as having given and continues to give a significant place to genocide negationism and revisionism of all kinds across the globe, which current and future generations still have to face.
Mr Ndayisaba says government was making sure that genocide studies are part of the school syllabus and are inculcated in the youth through the civic education program.
Last year, the Rwanda Media Commission, the media self-regulatory body sought to strip local online bloggers and YouTubers of the journalist tag and bar them from interviewing the population without success.
Its officials recently moved to regulate the platforms but the move would be suspended following widespread criticism.
The body on Wednesday issued a statement warning journalists, especially those running internet-based outlets to desist from anything tantamount to propagating division, genocide ideology, and not to provide the platform to individuals who may do so.