Carleton’s Rwanda Initiative helps mark 15th anniversary of the Rwanda Genocide

Ottawa – The Rwanda Initiative at Carleton University will be involved in a number of events during the month of April to mark the 15th anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

The genocide began after the assassination of Rwanda’s president on April 6, 1994. Over the next 100 days, it claimed upwards of one million lives among members of the Tutsi minority and Hutu moderates.

Through the Rwanda Initiative project - www.RwandaInitiative.ca - Carleton’s School of Journalism and Communication has been working since 2006 with its counterpart at the National University of Rwanda to re-build the media sector in that country. The Initiative provides visiting lecturers and media trainers in Rwanda, brings Rwandan journalists to Canada to study or train and runs a summer internship program for Carleton students in Rwanda.

Genocide commemoration events in Ottawa are being coordinated by Humura - www.humura.ca - an Ottawa-based association representing Genocide survivors.

- On April 7, Rwanda Initiative founder Allan Thompson, a journalism professor at Carleton, will moderate a panel discussion on Parliament Hill. Concordia history professor Frank Chalk, MPs Paul Dewar and Irwin Cotler and Rwandan Ambassador Edda Mukabagwiza will take part. The event is open to the public and begins at 5:30 p.m. in Room 200, West Block.

- On April 8, Prof. Thompson will also take part in Canada, Genocide and the Media: a Conversation, a panel discussion being hosted in Toronto by the African Studies program at New College, University of Toronto. The panel will be moderated by John Honderich, chairman of the board of Torstar and a donor to the Rwanda Initiative project. It will also include Rwandan journalist George Muhinda, a Rwanda Initiative intern with Metroland’s Toronto Community News. The event takes place at 6 p.m. in the William Doo auditorium, New College, 45 Willcocks St., Toronto

- From April 8-12, the Living With exhibit of photos depicting Rwanda’s continuing struggle with HIV-Aids will be on display in the atrium at New College, University of Toronto. The exhibit is the result of collaboration between the Toronto-based group PhotoSensitive (www.photosensitive.com) and the Rwanda Initiative.

- Carleton University will post, on its website, a SoundSlides presentation about Rwanda prepared by journalism professor Jeff Sallot, who covered the Rwanda genocide as a reporter for the Globe and Mail and returned to Rwanda last year to teach through the Rwanda Initiative. Prof. Sallot’s audiovisual presentation chronicles his return to Rwanda http://jeffsallot.webng.com/Rwanda%20Initiative/.

- On April 18, Carleton’s Arthur Kroeger College will play host to another Humura event, an all-day conference on international justice and the genocide. The event begins at 9 a.m. in Kroeger College. Full details are at www.humura.ca.

The Rwanda Initiative has sent more than 75 Canadians to Rwanda to teach journalism at the university, work as media interns with news organizations in Rwanda or as media trainers in Rwanda’s newsrooms. The initial focus was a visiting lecturer program at the National University of Rwanda, through which Carleton provided journalism educators and senior journalists as professors to fill the gaps in the teaching staff at the National University. In January 2008, the Rwanda Initiative also began providing visiting lecturers to the new Great Lakes Media Centre in Kigali, a night school for working journalists.

One of the primary objectives of the Initiative is to address the shortage of journalism educators in Rwanda, a country where the media sector, while devastated by the 1994 genocide, also remains key to the post-genocide reconstruction of the country. “Another priority of the program is to raise the level of professionalism in the Rwandan media,” says Prof. Thompson. “Both of these objectives have been served by bringing Rwandan journalists to Canada to study and train.”

Three Rwandan journalists are in the process of completing their Master of Journalism degree at Carleton: Arthur Asiimwe, who was the Reuters news agency correspondent in Rwanda; Ignatius Kabagambe, who is on leave from his position as managing director of the New Times, Rwanda’s English-language daily newspaper, and Collin Haba, a former New Times reporter who also worked as a communications adviser to Rwanda’s First Lady.

In addition, several Rwandan journalists are in Canada through the Rwanda Initiative’s internship program. Fred Mwasa, a copy editor with the Rwanda News Agency, which comprises a newswire and tri-monthly newspaper Grands Lacs Hebdo, is just completing a three-month internship at Embassy magazine in Ottawa. Louise Umutoni, a reporter with the New Times and formerly Focus newspaper in Kigali, is part-way through a three-month internship with the Ottawa Citizen. George Muhinda, a former correspondent for the New Times in Arusha, where he covered the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, is just completing an internship in Toronto, where he worked with Metroland’s Toronto Community News.