Hate Radio' Helped Turn the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda Into Organised Mass Murder

The film traces how colonial rule hardened fluid social categories into fixed Hutu and Tutsi identities, and how post-independence politics turned these into a racialised hierarchy of fear. It also explores how economic crisis, civil war and the Arusha peace process created space for extremists, who used newspapers, churches and 'hate radio' to prepare people for mass murder. Through testimony and archive footage, the documentary follows how local officials, militias and neighbours organised killings at terrifying speed, and how international actors failed to intervene.

It also looks into how courts, memorials and political power have since shaped Rwanda's official narrative of the genocide. The genocide against the Tutsi is one of the few mass atrocities universally recognised under international law. The film is part of Al Jazeera's Untangles series.