If someone were looking for simple and effective means to prevent the genocide in Rwanda, wrote the US-American journalist Philip Gourevitch, the radio station “Radio Télévision Libre des Milles Collines” (RTLM) would have been a good place to start.

Photo: gogo power

In the months of April, May and June 1994, an estimated 800,000 to 1,000,000 of its Tutsi minority and thousands of moderate Hutus were killed in only 100 days. The tools used to humiliate and kill people of all ages and genders were simple: machetes, sticks, and a few guns. Indeed, the most powerful instrument of the genocide was the “Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines” (RTLM).

With unspeakable cynicism, the staff of the popular station had been preparing the genocide like an election campaign for months. The program consisted of pop music, riveting sports coverage, political communiqués, and remarkably hateful calls to murder. The newest Congolese music and the most aggressive racial analyses were combined into a dreary few square meter laboratory of racist ideology.

HATE RADIO is a project launched by the International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM). In its artistic reenactments, the IIPM pays utmost attention to factual accuracy of an RTLM show. Extensive archival research and interviews with witnesses and survivors provide the foundation upon which the institute develops its projects. Run by its hosts : Three Hutu extremists and the white Italian-Belgian Georges Ruggiu, HATE RADIO returns RTLM to the airways in a reconstructed backdrop that remains faithful to the original survivors of the genocide are standing on stage.
With this approach the project shows how racism functions, how human beings are “talked out of” their humanity an instillation reconstructed from documents and witness statements provides the answers to these questions so that people can feel and experience these happenings for themselves.

An extensive volume of material, and various events accompanying the exhibit, help to expand HATE RADIO into a broad, interdisciplinary intervention examining the current forms and manifestations of racist violence in Europe and Africa, as well as the ability to represent racist violence as a work of art.

See Press Kit: Press-Kit_Hate-Radio_11_08_02

THE IIPM

The International Institute of Political Murder was founded at the end of 2007 by writer and director Milo Rau, to strengthen exchange between theater, the fine arts, film and research about reenactment – the reproduction of historical events – as well as to reflect upon the theoretical aspects of this exchange.

The previous productions of IIPM, which were shown at numerous theaters in Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Africa, Austria, the USA and Romania, met international response and represent a new, documentary and aesthetic compressed form of political art.

The IIPM has its Headquarters in Switzerland and Germany.

For more information about the institute like project, lectures etc., please visit the site:

Website International Institue of Political Murder

Upcoming Performances of HATE RADIO:

18 May 2013, Halle Kalk Köln (Germany) Sommerblut

23 May 2013, CaféTeatret Kopenhagen (Denmark) Cafeteatret

Related links:

RWANDA file

Sources: IIPM, gogo power