The Western media has imposed itself on the African continent, cunningly by camouflaging their various nationalistic agendas as an international crusade to promote media professionalism and freedoms as well as “mainstream African issues” on the global forum. However, their mostly agenda-driven reporting has done more harm than good because their manifest biased reporting ends up making things worse, especially in what concerns African political conflicts.
A case in point is the ongoing conflict between the Kinshasa regime and the Revolutionary Movement- M23. The reporting by the Western media on the conflict since the beginning has left a lot to be desired. The leading international media houses have chosen to completely ignore the root causes and instead chose to do PR for the Kinshasa regime!
By so doing, the international media has obscured the world from a genocide that has been ongoing since the beginning of last year, perpetrated by the Kinshasa regime together with its allied militia groups.
Whenever the FARDC and their allies from armed groups that include FDLR have been massacring Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese, the Western media would ignore, only to break their silence whenever the Kinsasa regime would make outrageous accusations against M23.
After the Bujumbura’s convened Extraordinary Summit of the EAC Heads of States, the Kinshasa regime has continued to violate the ceasefire and all the resultant recommendations. The FARDC and their allies including FDLR and mercenaries have been using plane raids, heavy artillery and tanks to bombard heavily populated areas controlled by the M23 Movement, resulting in massive deaths of innocent civilians.
There has also been an exodus of refugees fleeing from the bombardment as well as planned massacres of Tutsi for months now. However, not Reuters, AFP, AP, BBC, RFI, DW, CNN, Aljazeera have reported on this side of events. For the Rwandophones, the feeling is that of “us against the world.”