Hutu killers sang his songs as they slaughtered Tutsis in Rwanda and in 2008, judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) found him guilty of incitement to commit genocide. On Thursday, the UN court’s appeals chamber upheld the conviction of Rwandan troubadour Simon Bikindi, along with his sentence of 15 years in prison.

By Thijs Bouwknegt

"The appeals chamber rejects Simon Bikindi's appeal in its entirety, confirms his conviction for direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and confirms the sentence of 15 years imprisonment," said presiding judge Patrick Robinson." 

Machete wielding Hutu militia and civilians massacred some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda’s 100-day bloodbath. And the trial of “Rwanda's Michael Jackson” proves that even musicians can be held responsible for inciting genocide.

Folk singer
His songs were banned in 1994, but Simon Bikindi (1954) is still Rwanda’s most famous folk singer of his generation. His voice dominated the airwaves when his songs were played over the extremist Hutu radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) during the genocide. The troubadour is the first artist to have been brought before an international criminal court and charged with using his creativity to incite genocide. Prosecutors in Arusha had singled out three of Bikindi’s rap songs for promoting ethnic hatred, which they said had been widely broadcast during the genocide.

According to eyewitness reports, many of the Hutu killers sang Bikindi's songs as they hacked or beat to death Tutsis, using their government-issued machetes. "In his songs, Bikindi said we had to fight the Tutsis with all our strength, that the Tutsis wanted to bring back serfdom," a witness said during the trial.

The witness - a former Interahamwe member currently serving a life sentence in Rwanda for his role in the killing spree - said the songs were "full of allusions and images, the meaning of which was clear to any Rwandan. Rise up against the Tutsis, that was the kind of message in his songs."

Bikindi continued singing as he fled to Zaire – now the Democratic Republic of Congo - accompanying Rwanda’s ousted militia, military and government officials. He ended up in centre for asylum seekers in the Netherlands where he was arrested in 2001 and sent to Arusha.

Couldn't stop genocidaires singing songs
Bikindi argued that he had never killed anyone and that he couldn't stop the génocidaires from singing his songs. But in December, 2008 the ICTR sentenced him to 15 years imprisonment for broadcasting announcements from a loud-speaker on his car in June 1994, as he lead a caravan of Interahamwe militia, calling on Hutus to exterminate Tutsis. On a second drive along the same road between Kivumu and Kayove, he asked if people had been killing the "snakes".

The singer was found guilty of direct and public incitement to commit genocide. He was acquitted on five other charges including genocide, crimes against humanity and murder.

The judges said his songs "manipulated the history of Rwanda to extol Hutu solidarity with the specific intent to disseminate pro-Hutu ideology and anti-Tutsi propaganda, and thus to encourage ethnic hatred." They also found that broadcasting the songs on the radio served to amplify the genocide, but added that prosecutors had not established a direct link between Bikindi’s music and any specific attacks or killings.

ICTR prosecutor Hassan Bubacar Jallow appealed the judgement and called for a life sentence for the singer who rose to fame in Rwanda as a champion of traditional culture. Jallow said his music was a “clear provocation for Hutu extremists to slaughter moderate fellow Hutus and minority Tutsis” during the killing spree.

Bikindi also appealed the judgement and performed a song calling for peace and reconciliation in Rwanda during the Appeals Chamber final hearing. ‘'Let us pray, let us pray, so that what happened in Rwanda will never happen again, never again,'' he sang when presiding judge Patrick Robinson granted him an opportunity to address the court, according to the Hirondelle News Agency.

On Thursday, the appeals judges in Arusha rejected "in it's entirety" both the prosecutor's and Bikindi's appeals.

Drumbeat
It is not the first time the UN tribunal has dealt with hate speech. In an earlier landmark judgment, the court convicted three major media players for inciting genocide. Hassan Ngeze, director and editor of the radical newspaper Kangura, was - among other charges - found guilty for inflammatory articles written to incite ethnic hatred.

Others were Rwanda's ‘genocidal ideologues’, historian Ferdinand Nahimana and lawyer Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, who were in charge of RTLM. The radio station coordinated the genocide, gave death tolls like weather reports and urged death squads to go to villages where ''the work'' wasn't finished yet. "RTLM broadcasts were a drumbeat calling on listeners to take action against Tutsis," Judge Navanethem Pillay said when she delivered the judgement in 2003.

Georges Ruggiu, a former RTLM producer and reporter, was jailed for 12 years in 2000 after he pleaded guilty to direct and public incitement to commit genocide. The Belgian national testified against the three other defendants. He said RTLM received information from Interahamwe militia about operations they planned and "search" notices for people or cars, which were then broadcast on the radio.

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