Prison of the Past: A Reporter Revisits His 'Shameful' Coverage of Rwanda

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-reporter-looks-back-at-his-shameful-coverage-of-rwanda-a-962335.html



Twenty years ago on April 6, the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda began. At the time, many Western reporters played it down as "ethnic warfare," including Bartholomäus Grill, now a correspondent for SPIEGEL. He looks back with shame.

Prison of the Past: A Reporter Revisits His 'Shameful' Coverage of Rwanda
By Bartholomäus Grill
April 04, 2014 – 12:14 PM

It was April 1994, and Princess was infected by the feverish mood that had taken hold in all of South Africa at the time. She was our housekeeper in Johannesburg, a plump, sedate and humorous woman, whose real name was Nolizwe Mneno. She had changed her name to make it easier for white people to remember.

The first free election in the country's history was slated for the end of the month, an election in which all citizens -- black and white -- would participate for the first time. The end of apartheid made headlines around the world, an epochal event with more than 400 correspondents reporting on it. I was one of them.

On April 16, 11 days before the "mother of all elections," a press contingent accompanied Nelson Mandela, the future president, to the Umlazi Township near Durban. It was one of his final appearances before the election, and about 50,000 people had gathered for an open-air rally, dancing, singing and celebrating the freedom fighter as though he were the Messiah.

White domination was coming to an end; an African dream was becoming a reality. It was the news story of the day, but only because no one -- including me -- was aware of the sheer magnitude of the nightmare unfolding in the center of the continent at the same time. I was working for the German weekly Die Zeit at the time and, like others, I too wrote unforgivable stories from afar for which I am ashamed today, 20 years later.