A celestial envoy must have visited the heads of BBC Africa French Service in Dakar, Senegal, last week. It fired one of its journalists, a Congolese national by the names of Jacques Matand who had produced an interview with a very well-known denier of the Genocide against the Tutsi. The BBC has been accused on many occasions by the Rwandan government of being a den of denial specialists, especially its Kinyarwanda service, where they are able to veil messages that only a Rwandan would understand. The coded broadcasts are difficult to deal with, but Matand’s interview with Charles Onana was very explicit. Matand could have gotten away with it had he been smart enough, but as it turned out, he was a flag-waving acolyte of Onana’s message and ardently encouraged the distortion of history. Many international media houses are easily duped by so-called “experts” yet many have nefarious agendas. The media houses either do not care or knowingly fan the flames of hatred ethnic division, but they should not walk away scot-free. They need to be called out. Matand’s firing is just a drop in the ocean as more needs to be done to counter the venomous messengers out there, many of whom have become obsessed and fixated with slandering anything from within our borders. The only way to counter them is not attempting to justify the country’s every action. Rwandans should instead work to achieve because action speaks louder than words. They should also always keep this in mind; there is nothing that makes Rwanda detractors madder than seeing it up there among the achievers- it really hurts to the core
