FIELD NOTE ILLUSTRATING HOW A PERPETRATOR CAN COMMIT A CRIME FILMING INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR RWANDA V. RUGGIU, NAHIMANA AND BARAYAGQWIZA RTLM founder, Ferndinand Nahimana Basics Tribunal: International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) What Crimes: Genocide Who: Georges Ruggiu, Presenter on Radio Télévison Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM), Ferdinand Nahimana, Co-founder of RTLM, Jean-Bosco Barayagqwiza, Co-founder of RTLM How: Incitement Backstory Founded in 1993 and owned by family members and friends of the then President of Rwanda, Juvénal Habyarimana, Radio Télévison Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM) was known for having the best disc jockeys in Rwanda. Its popular mix of African music, news programming, and political analysis made it one of Rwanda’s most popular radio stations. On April 6, 1994, President Habyarimana’s plane was downed by a missile. President Habyarimana was a Hutu, the ethnic majority in Rwanda, and the attack caused the already high tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups to boil over. Government-aligned Hutus used the attack to incite a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Tutsi minority. In particular, this incident triggered RTLM journalists to encourage fellow Hutus to kill their Tutsi neighbors. Over the airwaves, RTLM journalists made the following calls — and many more — to their listeners: “You have to kill [the Tutsis], they are cockroaches...” “All those who are listening to us, arise so that we can all fight for our Rwanda...Fight with the weapons you have at your disposal, those of you who have arrows, with arrows, those of you who have spears with spears...Take your traditional tools...we must all fight [the Tutsis]; we must finish with them, exterminate them, sweep them from the whole country... There must be no refuge for them, none at all.” “I do not know whether God will help us exterminate [the Tutsis]...but we must rise up to exterminate this race of bad people...They must be exterminated because there is no other way.” “You have to work harder, the graves are not full.” 117 VIDEO AS EVIDENCE: PROVING RESPONSIBILITY V 1.0