Rwanda’s Senate on Tuesday, June 30, 2009, performed the ritual of unanimously passing amendments to the controversial Media Bill, as proposed by President Paul Kagame earlier this year, leaving the president with the final decision on the media’s future as the quest for civil liberties and press freedom continues.

Presenting the Amendment Bill, the Minister of Information, Louise Mushikiwabo, requested senators to consider the urgency of the law and not put it to commission, but debate and make amendments in the shortest time possible. The senators, the majority of who are from Kagame’s Rwanda Patriotic Front, obliged without hassle. They did not subject the Bill to the commission scrutiny. The plenary session presided over by Speaker Vicente Biruta looked boring as senators seemed to have a collective view binding them.

“The Bill has stayed for so long We need the media to work according to the law and to standardize the whole profession. We cannot wait any longer,” Mushikiwabo explained, as the senators roared in approval.

Explaining to the members the concerns over criminal liability on newscasters, especially when it is expected that they present what has been approved by their editors, Mushikiwabo said that the law is intended to hold newsreaders responsible in case of some individual reasons they passed information without their editors’ consent.

“Holding newscasters responsible does not mean the law incriminates them, but we wish not to leave anyone out just in case some information passed. If the newsreader managed to show that the information passed had been approved by superiors, then the responsibility shifts to editors. But if it was the other way round, the newscaster would not be answerable in any way,” Mushikiwabo explained. Doesn’t make sense!

Another article of concern was one about journalists seeking permission to use other people’s work. The minister explained that many journalists in Rwanda avoided crediting their sources, hence the need for a reminder that they can be sued for it.
In an exclusive interview, Mushikiwabo told ET that the Bill had taken about three years waiting for parliamentary debate and people were anxious to have a new law replacing the one of 2002.

She said the new law was all-inclusive and engaging to the media and hoped it would help clean up the industry and set standards that have been lacking.

“It’s long since we published a law for the media. The 2002 media law needs to be updated after many changes in the media industry itself. We needed a law that is all encompassing, enriching the profession and engaging the media, and this has all that,” she said.

After Senate approval of the Bill, it goes back to the president for signature and later publication in the national gazette as a law. It had been on the president’s desk earlier this year but was returned for further amendment, specifically on four articles: definition of a journalist, levels of education, criminal liability in case of any defamation and crediting of sources as prescribed by President Kagame.

In a related development, following the continued misunderstanding between the government of Rwanda and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) over local language programs, Rwanda is a total ban of BBC Kinyarwanda programs, the information minister told ET.

According to Mushikiwabo, the initial intention of the program was to unify people as the section’s name goes, Gahuzamiryango (bringing families together) but it has since changed due to what she called journalists’ personal negative intentions towards Rwanda.

“The program was meant to help people unite. That seems to have been achieved, and the journalists are using the airwaves to divide the same people. We are planning to have a political understanding with BBC management to have Kinyarwanda programs scrapped off the radio’s line-up so we can listen to other languages than getting misleading information from malicious journalists.”

Mushikiwabo further said that the Rwandan government needs a variety of media outlets, and would not tolerate those that would fail government programs.

Presenting the Media Bill to senators, Mushikiwabo told legislators that the new law was binding on all media outlets and practitioners within the boundaries of Rwanda, noting that it would be better to deal with negative media through courts of law.
“We have only three international radios operating in Rwanda: BBC, VOA and Duetchwelle, but the first two are giving us a headache. For unknown reasons, the journalists there have continued to be negative towards government programs,” Musikiwabo said.

She said that Rwanda and the BBC had agreed to check the Kinyarwanda programs but unfortunately after lifting the ban on June 24, the journalist hosted a different radio director and went against what the two parties had agreed. Mushikiwabo called it using language barrier as a scapegoat to violate agreements.

Rwanda suggests that an editor of local language visits the country and sees facts first hand than depending on second hand information that is always distorted, according to Mushikiwabo.