A Discussion with Thierry Kevin Gatete, Human Rights Lawyer, Blogger, and Activist, Kigali, Rwanda
With: Thierry Kevin Gatete Berkley Center Profile
June 20, 2016
Background: As part of the Education and Social Justice Fellowship Project, undergraduate student Mariam Diefallah interviewed Thierry Kevin Gatete, a human rights lawyer, blogger, and activist, in June 2016. Gatete discusses the role of media and civil society in Rwanda, including the importance of developing local media channels rooted in Rwanda values.
Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
My name is Getete, I am a human rights lawyer, that is my job, but I also studied political science and now I am working mostly with governance. I am a researcher at a think tank called the Institute of Political Analysis and Research. I also have a blog.
During the conference, you talked a lot about the role of media. Can you please tell me how you became interested in that field as well?
I mainly comes from genocide denial, at least that is from one perspective. From another perspective, I became interested in media from the experiences that I got. I studied in South Africa. When I was there I realized how the media can be misleading as it fashions the world in a way that is not true. Many experiences taught me how to be careful about what I read and to try to analyze it from the truth, or from what I know. I am sure before you come to Rwanda, you had the opportunity to read, and now you probably know that what you read has nothing to do with what you are seeing. But we cannot make the world come here to see for themselves. If you, for example, try to write about your experiences, you will reach even 10,000 people, but you cannot compete with the mainstream media that occupies the whole media space. This is why I am interested in this field.
As a Rwandan, would you say the focus on the history of the genocide through media and other outlets can be traumatizing?
Listen, you are here in a traumatized country already. Everyone here lost relatives or have relatives who participated in the genocide, so we are traumatized. It is not something we can escape, so the question should be how do we build a society like that. We do not care about Western democracy or those values. We care about our Rwandan values. We need social cohesion; we need to know how to survive with dignity and not to go back to that history. We are trying to be a tolerant society. Other people’s theories of democracy and human rights can wait, or it can be implemented as long as they do not undermine social cohesion in Rwanda.
How would you define social justice in terms of the role of media and activism?
Media as we know it, the mainstream media does not help. Also, civil society and NGOs and the whole humanitarian industry—they do not help, which is the problem in my opinion. Some organizations in essence stemmed from a real belief in social justice, but they eventually became manipulated by politics. They become influenced by neoliberal thinking, or even by the markets and businesses. On the other hand, NGOs became somewhat a concept that undermines local knowledge, experiences, and expertise for the sake of multinational groups, you name them—Oxfam, CARE, or whatever.
It is not true that all the way from Egypt, you can change Rwandan society; being Egyptian gives you an understanding of the Egyptian society. You can of course contribute to the Rwandan society, but in Rwanda we do not need Egyptian knowledge to change a Rwandan society. That is exactly what happens when you have an international this or that. What I advocate for is local knowledge, local understanding of our own problems, being open to others, to Egyptians like yourself, to Qataris, Indians, Chinese, but to focus on our local expertise. I am not necessarily anti-something. I just believe that societies should learn from each others, but the nations should be given the chance to let their locals decide their destiny. To define the questions and the answers, to try and fail and try and fail, but eventually being able to identify a mechanism that works for the place. We need to decolonize the scholarship, decolonize the thinking itself and the mindset, the information as well.
In that sense, how should one approach international media?
You study in Qatar, right? See, Al-Jazeera is good for Qatar, Russia Today is good for Russia, BBC is good for the British...there is nothing abnormal about what I am saying; it is their media, they invest in it, and they have the freedom to say whatever they want in it. Just like my blog—it is good for me and I can say what I want on my blog. But there becomes a problem the moment those media outlets try to influence other places. If Rwandans listen to the international media more, and how it talks about the genocide, they will probably kill each other very soon because international media is fostering genocide ideology. Western media especially has played a huge role in advancing the genocide agenda through promoting for democracy.
I think it is good that Egyptians have Arabic; it is very beautiful to have your own language. It is a very good starting point as it can be there for protection. It is beautiful that your societies do not have to speak in English, Spanish, or French.
For us, we communicate with each other in other people’s languages like English. I wish it was like that for us. English is the language of colonialism. Through English there was slave trade, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and Christianity. All those instruments of oppression are deeply entrenched. This is also why I am happy you are studying at Georgetown, but in Qatar. We do not have a firewall like yours; the whole African elite does not have any protection. The fight with colonial minds is a lost battle. But in Rwanda we are always trying to find homegrown solutions. Many people who did that were fought like Gamal Abdel Nasser in your country; he was increasingly isolated for example, but people still saw welfare and education, which helped people decolonizing their minds as they have decolonized mindsets. We are trying to achieve that, and I hope we see other countries that try to do that without fears. I do not think there are any other conversations we can have before this problem is solved.
I am just trying to understand. Do you think this is an issue of racism?
It is racism. What people care about is mutual respect: you can say you think our policies are stupid, but you still have to understand it is none of your business. Colonialism was an art of taking some principles and making them universal values. There is no right or wrong; no one really knows what is right or wrong, but the moment you sit down and say you are the smart one in the room and decide that others are barbaric, when you start to invest money and bomb people to implement your values, it does not make any sense.
I want to shift the focus more on Rwandan civil society. In one of your blogs, you mentioned that Rwandans are reflections of their institutions, but at the same time you criticize those institutions. So, is it a problem of institutions or of Rwandan values?
Civil society is not the Rwandan government or the Rwandan people; they are mostly funded by non-Rwandan corporations. It is very dangerous to have a groups in your society that have a big influence and that are not funded by the government. It is not surprising when you find that the product of this is not Rwandan. Those NGOs claim that they are working for the Rwandan interest, so it is not surprising when the Rwandan government does not fund them because they know they do not represent the Rwandan values.
So should the government invest more money in its media and institutions to avoid that problem?
Civil society does not require funding. I will take you to the Monday Talk in a bit, and you will see what a civil society is: it is a gathering of people who have conversations. It is not complicated or difficult. There is also Spoken Word Rwanda. It is a gathering of young people who say poetry; they do not have funding, but they still meet and perform to other people. We have poets, street photographers, artists—they are civil society. They do not need to go to workshops, conferences. They do not have annual agendas; they talk to the people, to their own society. Civil society is social activism. It is movements, not business and markets. People should organize themselves to address their problems. Our government asks for aid, though, because Rwanda is still a small economy. This is why we need people like bloggers to be our media, because they are not influenced by money. They write as a hobby at the end of the week when they are done with the jobs. The government in that sense cannot limit us because it is not controlling us.
Would you say people here trust their media? Especially taking into consideration the history Rwanda has with media’s hate speech during the genocide?
The current media is irrelevant. People do not really follow it or trust it at all. The rest of the media we have is Western media, which like I told you we are trying to tell people to watch out from.
My name is Getete, I am a human rights lawyer, that is my job, but I also studied political science and now I am working mostly with governance. I am a researcher at a think tank called the Institute of Political Analysis and Research. I also have a blog.
During the conference, you talked a lot about the role of media. Can you please tell me how you became interested in that field as well?
I mainly comes from genocide denial, at least that is from one perspective. From another perspective, I became interested in media from the experiences that I got. I studied in South Africa. When I was there I realized how the media can be misleading as it fashions the world in a way that is not true. Many experiences taught me how to be careful about what I read and to try to analyze it from the truth, or from what I know. I am sure before you come to Rwanda, you had the opportunity to read, and now you probably know that what you read has nothing to do with what you are seeing. But we cannot make the world come here to see for themselves. If you, for example, try to write about your experiences, you will reach even 10,000 people, but you cannot compete with the mainstream media that occupies the whole media space. This is why I am interested in this field.
As a Rwandan, would you say the focus on the history of the genocide through media and other outlets can be traumatizing?
Listen, you are here in a traumatized country already. Everyone here lost relatives or have relatives who participated in the genocide, so we are traumatized. It is not something we can escape, so the question should be how do we build a society like that. We do not care about Western democracy or those values. We care about our Rwandan values. We need social cohesion; we need to know how to survive with dignity and not to go back to that history. We are trying to be a tolerant society. Other people’s theories of democracy and human rights can wait, or it can be implemented as long as they do not undermine social cohesion in Rwanda.
How would you define social justice in terms of the role of media and activism?
Media as we know it, the mainstream media does not help. Also, civil society and NGOs and the whole humanitarian industry—they do not help, which is the problem in my opinion. Some organizations in essence stemmed from a real belief in social justice, but they eventually became manipulated by politics. They become influenced by neoliberal thinking, or even by the markets and businesses. On the other hand, NGOs became somewhat a concept that undermines local knowledge, experiences, and expertise for the sake of multinational groups, you name them—Oxfam, CARE, or whatever.
It is not true that all the way from Egypt, you can change Rwandan society; being Egyptian gives you an understanding of the Egyptian society. You can of course contribute to the Rwandan society, but in Rwanda we do not need Egyptian knowledge to change a Rwandan society. That is exactly what happens when you have an international this or that. What I advocate for is local knowledge, local understanding of our own problems, being open to others, to Egyptians like yourself, to Qataris, Indians, Chinese, but to focus on our local expertise. I am not necessarily anti-something. I just believe that societies should learn from each others, but the nations should be given the chance to let their locals decide their destiny. To define the questions and the answers, to try and fail and try and fail, but eventually being able to identify a mechanism that works for the place. We need to decolonize the scholarship, decolonize the thinking itself and the mindset, the information as well.
In that sense, how should one approach international media?
You study in Qatar, right? See, Al-Jazeera is good for Qatar, Russia Today is good for Russia, BBC is good for the British...there is nothing abnormal about what I am saying; it is their media, they invest in it, and they have the freedom to say whatever they want in it. Just like my blog—it is good for me and I can say what I want on my blog. But there becomes a problem the moment those media outlets try to influence other places. If Rwandans listen to the international media more, and how it talks about the genocide, they will probably kill each other very soon because international media is fostering genocide ideology. Western media especially has played a huge role in advancing the genocide agenda through promoting for democracy.
I think it is good that Egyptians have Arabic; it is very beautiful to have your own language. It is a very good starting point as it can be there for protection. It is beautiful that your societies do not have to speak in English, Spanish, or French.
For us, we communicate with each other in other people’s languages like English. I wish it was like that for us. English is the language of colonialism. Through English there was slave trade, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and Christianity. All those instruments of oppression are deeply entrenched. This is also why I am happy you are studying at Georgetown, but in Qatar. We do not have a firewall like yours; the whole African elite does not have any protection. The fight with colonial minds is a lost battle. But in Rwanda we are always trying to find homegrown solutions. Many people who did that were fought like Gamal Abdel Nasser in your country; he was increasingly isolated for example, but people still saw welfare and education, which helped people decolonizing their minds as they have decolonized mindsets. We are trying to achieve that, and I hope we see other countries that try to do that without fears. I do not think there are any other conversations we can have before this problem is solved.
I am just trying to understand. Do you think this is an issue of racism?
It is racism. What people care about is mutual respect: you can say you think our policies are stupid, but you still have to understand it is none of your business. Colonialism was an art of taking some principles and making them universal values. There is no right or wrong; no one really knows what is right or wrong, but the moment you sit down and say you are the smart one in the room and decide that others are barbaric, when you start to invest money and bomb people to implement your values, it does not make any sense.
I want to shift the focus more on Rwandan civil society. In one of your blogs, you mentioned that Rwandans are reflections of their institutions, but at the same time you criticize those institutions. So, is it a problem of institutions or of Rwandan values?
Civil society is not the Rwandan government or the Rwandan people; they are mostly funded by non-Rwandan corporations. It is very dangerous to have a groups in your society that have a big influence and that are not funded by the government. It is not surprising when you find that the product of this is not Rwandan. Those NGOs claim that they are working for the Rwandan interest, so it is not surprising when the Rwandan government does not fund them because they know they do not represent the Rwandan values.
So should the government invest more money in its media and institutions to avoid that problem?
Civil society does not require funding. I will take you to the Monday Talk in a bit, and you will see what a civil society is: it is a gathering of people who have conversations. It is not complicated or difficult. There is also Spoken Word Rwanda. It is a gathering of young people who say poetry; they do not have funding, but they still meet and perform to other people. We have poets, street photographers, artists—they are civil society. They do not need to go to workshops, conferences. They do not have annual agendas; they talk to the people, to their own society. Civil society is social activism. It is movements, not business and markets. People should organize themselves to address their problems. Our government asks for aid, though, because Rwanda is still a small economy. This is why we need people like bloggers to be our media, because they are not influenced by money. They write as a hobby at the end of the week when they are done with the jobs. The government in that sense cannot limit us because it is not controlling us.
Would you say people here trust their media? Especially taking into consideration the history Rwanda has with media’s hate speech during the genocide?
The current media is irrelevant. People do not really follow it or trust it at all. The rest of the media we have is Western media, which like I told you we are trying to tell people to watch out from.
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