Can Journalism Kill?

Can Journalism Kill?

Each group will receive copies of radio broadcasts and political cartoons created and disseminated during the height of the genocide in Rwanda. In your group you will examine and analyze the materials below, focusing a several key questions which you will report back to the whole class.

• What might have been the goal in creating these materials?

• What messages about the Tutsi did these broadcasts and the cartoon communicate?

• Considering that many of these messages were sent by government agencies, what impact would they have had on both Tutsi and Hutu?

Some key information about Rwanda in 1994 to review with your group before you begin your research and analysis:

• Inexpensive FM radios were widely available through Rwanda before and during the events of 1994

• In some areas, the government distributed radios free of charge to remote areas.

• It was customary for people without radios to listen in bars, restaurants, or with their neighbors

(Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda, Alison Des Forges, pp. 65-72)

Contents:

-       pg. 2 - Radio Excerpts from RTLM

-       pg. 3-4 Newspaper Excerpts (Cover and  Hutu 10 Commandments)

-       pg. 5 Music - Simon Bikindi

-       pg. 6 Cartoons from Kangura

-       pg. 7 Radio from Easter Sunday

-       pg. 8 Newspaper Editorial from Kangura

During April, 1994, RTLM (Radio Television Libre Des Millie Collines) broadcaster Georges Ruggiu, a Belgian, alerted his listeners to the location of victims:

around the hill ... in the woods, suspect movements of people have been observed... People of Rugonga, of Kanongo, by the gas station, pay attention, go to ... check out that woods, go ensure security and that the inyenzi (cockroaches ) have not gotten in there. (Des Forges, p, 208)

 In a 1994 interview with Radio Rwanda, the respected son of a former Rwandan president told his listeners, incorrectly, that the Tutsi intended to massacre the Hutu. The result was to incite Hutu to begin the genocide against the Tutsi:

They (the Tutsi) are going to exterminate, exterminate, exterminate, exterminate (ugutsembatsemba-tsembatsemba)... They are going to exterminate you until they are the only ones left in this country, so that power which their fathers kept for four hundred years they can keep for a thousand years. (Des Forges, p. 227)

 In mid April, 1994, at the height of the genocide, the Rwandan Ministry of Defense identified the Tutsi as the objective of the killing. The Ministry instructed Hutu to...

...do patrols, as they are used to doing, in their neighborhoods. They must close ranks, remember how to use their usual tools (ie weapons) and defend themselves... I would also ask that each neighborhood try to organize itself to do communal work to clear the brush, to search houses, .. to search the marshes of the area to be sure there that no inyenzi (cockroaches) have slipped in to hide themselves there... so they should cut the brush, search the drains and ditches, put up barriers, choosing reliable people to do this, who have what they need, so that nothing can escape them. (Des Forges, p. 249)

In a similar fashion, a witness from Rutobwe, Rwanda, described the impact of the anti-Tutsi propaganda radio broadcasts:

...by spreading rumors, they made a large part of the population of afraid of the RPF (Rwanda Patriotic Front). I remember once I was speaking with one of my students and I told him 'you're crazy to say that all Tutsi are armed RPF' Even though he said these things, I really didn't believe that he was serious. 'Did you ever seea RPF soldier?' I asked him. But he was serious. They cultivated fear. (Des Forges, p. 372)

On April 12, Radio Rwanda began broadcasting warnings to the country, calling for Hutu to defend themselves from the Tutsi:

Soldiers, gendarmes (National Police) and all Rwandans have decided to fight their common enemy and all have identified him. The enemy is still the same. He is the one who had always been trying to return the monarch, who was overthrown... The Ministry of Defense asks Rwandans, soldiers, and gendarmes the following: citizens: are asked to act together, carry out patrols, and fight the enemy.

The cover of the December 1993 issue of Kangura. The title states, "Tutsi: Race of God", while the text to the right of the machete states, "Which weapons are we going to use to beat the cockroaches for good?". The man pictured is the second president of the First Republic, Grégoire Kayibanda, who made Hutu the governing ethnicity after the 1959 massacres.

The "Hutu Ten Commandments" (also "Ten Commandments of the Bahutu") was a document published in the December 1990 edition of Kangura, an anti-Tutsi, pro-Hutu, Kinyarwanda-language newspaper in Kigali, Rwanda. The Hutu Ten Commandments are often cited as a prime example of anti-Tutsi propaganda that was promoted by extremists in Rwanda following the 1990 invasion by the Rwandan Patriotic Front and prior to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide

The Hutu Ten Commandments

1. Every Hutu should know that a Tutsi woman, whoever she is, works for the interest of her Tutsi ethnic group. As a result, we shall consider a traitor any Hutu who

·       marries a Tutsi woman

·       befriends a Tutsi woman

·       employs a Tutsi woman as a secretary or a concubine.

2. Every Hutu should know that our Hutu daughters are more suitable and conscientious in their role as woman, wife and mother of the family. Are they not beautiful, good secretaries and more honest?

3. Hutu women, be vigilant and try to bring your husbands, brothers and sons back to reason.

4. Every Hutu should know that every Tutsi is dishonest in business. His only aim is the supremacy of his ethnic group. As a result, any Hutu who does the following is a traitor:

·       makes a partnership with Tutsi in business

·       invests his money or the government's money in a Tutsi enterprise

·       lends or borrows money from a Tutsi

·       gives favours to Tutsi in business (obtaining import licenses, bank loans, construction sites, public markets, etc.).

5. All strategic positions, political, administrative, economic, military and security should be entrusted only to Hutu.

6. The education sector (school pupils, students, teachers) must be majority Hutu.

7. The Rwandan Armed Forces should be exclusively Hutu. The experience of the October 1990 war has taught us a lesson. No member of the military shall marry a Tutsi.

8. The Hutu should stop having mercy on the Tutsi.

9. The Hutu, wherever they are, must have unity and solidarity and be concerned with the fate of their Hutu brothers.

·       The Hutu inside and outside Rwanda must constantly look for friends and allies for the Hutu cause, starting with their Hutu brothers.

·       They must constantly counteract Tutsi propaganda.

·       The Hutu must be firm and vigilant against their common Tutsi enemy.

10. The Social Revolution of 1959, the Referendum of 1961, and the Hutu Ideology, must be taught to every Hutu at every level. Every Hutu must spread this ideology widely. Any Hutu who persecutes his brother Hutu for having read, spread, and taught this ideology is a traitor.

Music:

Through the months leading up to the April 6 explosion of violence, RTLM broadcasts reinforce a consciousness of Hutu unity and of the need for extermination of the Tutsi. One popular Simon Bikindi song is titled "Bene Sebahinzi" ("The Descendants of Sebahinzi", who in Rwandan tradition is the ‘Father of the Cultivators’). Lyrics hark back to a colonial past when Hutu, in their traditional role as farmers, suffered under Tutsi domination: "The servitude, the whip, the lash, the forced work that exhausted the people: that has disappeared forever. You, the great majority, pay attention and, descendants of Sebahinzi, remember this evil that should be driven as far away as possible, so that it never returns to Rwanda." The rewards of the 1959 revolution which brought the Hutu to power must be protected by "we who have benefited from it". To Bikindi’s audience these gains would be understood to include not only freedom and access to political power, but also land confiscated from exiled Tutsi. In the context of renewed Tutsi participation in a coalition government, and of the RPF ‘return to Rwanda’, the song evokes for Hutu listeners both the explicit fear of a return to subservience, and an unstated fear of displacement should their property be reclaimed.

Popular radio personality Kantano Habimana skillfully exploits this same historical division between the ethnicities in a vignette recalling the Tutsis’ traditional association with cattle herding and dairy production. "Some [Tutsi] were drinking milk because they simply had a sense of nostalgia for it... Someone wrote to me: 'Please, help! They are taking all the milk out of the dairy!’" His reference to Tutsi "nostalgia" for milk attributes a yearning for the days when they enjoyed social superiority; the specter of a milk shortage instills fear of their rapacious consumption of Rwanda’s resources. Just as when exiled Tutsi were denied the right to return to their homeland, the rhetoric insists that there is not enough land, enough food, enough living space for all. These claims of competition create a climate of fear, wherein Hutu are persuaded that a campaign to eliminate the Tutsi is merely an instinctual act of self-preservation.

The term ‘inyenzi’ encapsulates this portrait of an interloping force said to have infiltrated the Rwandan household with devastating effect disproportionate to their small size. In December 1993, Habimana asserts on air that the Tutsi "have all the money and the riches, even if they say that we treat them unequally." With the optimism of the majority, he asserts, "We will fight them and we will vanquish them, this is more than certain, all doubt is impossible and if they don’t watch out they will be exterminated... They are a clique representing only a small percentage of the population". Speeches such as these position the Tutsi, like the cockroach, in illegitimate possession of more than their fair share—indeed, challenge their claim to any share within Rwanda at all.

One witness recalled: 'they talked only about uniting together saying we had to fight the enemy. In the streets of Kigali, people were singing a little song that told it all:

Our enemy is one

We know him

It is the Tutsi

A propaganda cartoon: the doctor asks the patient what could be wrong

with him, the patient cries I have the disease of the Tutsi.

"What does it say?"

"Someone's killed Habyaramina."

Radio: We demand that our Hutu brothers do not let these crimes go unpunished. Raise yourselves, our brothers. Raise yourselves and work! Affute your tools and raise your clubs! It's time to eradiate the cancer race. Look for them everywhere..."

-RTLM Broadcast - Easter Sunday, April 3, 1994-

taken from: Genocide in Rwanda: A Collective Memory, pp. 117-118

And now, the Tutsis, these who have eaten lion, who have eaten lion and who are with the RPF, they want to take power. To take it by force of arms. They want to do a 'small thing,' they want to do this small thing during the Easter holidays, and they even say that they have dates. They have dates and we know them.

In fact, they would do better to calm down. We have agents, yeah, heh, ha! [voice rises until it breaks.] OUr agents are there with the RPF, we have agents who send us information. They tell ust he following: On 3, 4, and 5 April they say that there will be a small thing, here in Kigali, Kigali City. From today [3 April], Easter, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, a small thing is planned for Kigali City. And even on the 7 and 8 April. And then you will hear the sound of many bullets, you will hear grenades exploding.

I hope that the Rwandan armed forces are on guard. There are the Inziabwoba [the fearless ones] who have many, many armed troops, I cannot count them all. The Inkotanyi [the fierce fighters-RPF] who have run into them, it is they who know them. They are the ones who know them better than I. Because they, they have run into them and they know the way that they were treated. Or those who attacked Nyamagumba [fortified hill near Ruhengeri, i.e., attackers were RPF], it is they who can tell us how the vultures found something to eat.

But otherwise, to hold Kigali, we know how to do it, we know how to do it. On 3, 4, and 5 April, we expect this small thing will happen here in Kigali, and then they will follow up and rest ont he date of the 6 April, and on 7 and 8 April they are going to do another small thing, using their bullets and their grenades. But in reality, there will be the attack Simusiga ['save no more,' i.e., the final attack] that they are waiting for and expecting. And they say, 'When we have finished with this small thing to stir up the town, we will then throw ourselves into the Simusiga attack.' But as for the date, my agent [in the RPF] has not yet told me, he has not yet told me.

There are, nontheless, Tutsis who are humble, who come to Noheli [the announcer] and who say, 'We want democracy,' and they even gave me this information. And so what? isn't it like this that it really happens? What can we do? What can we do? Tutsis who really are humble, they are asking, be it by radio, be it in the newpapers, they are proclaiming from the bottom of their hearts as they say in Kinyarundi [the language of Burundi], they are saying to the RPF, 'These things that you want to do over the course of the Easter holidays, they don't have the least bit of interest for the Rwandan people.' The humble Tutsis, they say, 'These things, these disturbances, this bloodletting, we have had enough of them. You [the RPF] should know the Rwandan military, the armed forces of this country, you are goin got put them [these soldiers] at our backs, yet this is not necessary. This is going to provoke them, the armed forces of the country will get angry, and they can do it, easily, like this, pouh!' All of this will be the doing of the Tutsis, they are the ones that have caused us all of these problems!...

Kangura No. 19

Editorial: Hutus Should Help Kangura Defend the Hutus; I Will Pay the Price if Necessary, but I Will Warn the Hutus

We are now in a critical phase. I am saying this because the war that we thought was almost over has taken a turn for the worse. You are all aware of how the Head of State has endeavored to restore peace in Rwanda, but in vain. We have been attacked by the Inyenzi-Inkotanyi who accuse the Rwandan Government of preventing them from being repatriated. I will not go into any more details because I feel that those who follow the situation closely are aware of everything that has been done. Indeed, once you have seen one war, you have seen them all! We all know that with the exception of a few Hutus such as Kanyarengwe and Bizimungu, the refugees who have become Inyenzi-Inkotanyi are all descendants of the Tutsis. We dare say that when they came, shooting at us at the borders, they made no ethnic distinction. Nevertheless, they were willing to distinguish between Hutus and the Tutsis within the country. There were indeed numerous Hutus in the country and army who didn’t succumb on the battlefield; some of them fell into the trap of worldly women. So far, many have fallen into the trap. They include figures of authority, who consort with them even now, although they know perfectly well, and it has been proven, that when it comes to spying, the Inkotanyi enlist the help of their worldly sisters and daughters. You find them everywhere in all the institutions, in the Ministries, in the private sector, in legal and illegal drinking-places, as well as in our own houses, which many of them have managed to infiltrate through marriage. Having husbands does not prevent them from being accomplices and extracting secrets from people by using their worldly wiles. Hutus do not abuse others, they are taken advantage of. The Hutus must understand that they are not at all waging the war as the Tutsis, because everyone can see that the Tutsis want to regain the power that was taken from them by the Hutus. If you look closely, you will see that 85% of the Tutsis who live in the country are somehow linked with the refugees from which come the Inyenzi-Inkotanyi who attack us. That is the reason why some do not understand this war, while others prefer to remain quiet; but that doesn’t mean they do not have an opinion about it. And what explains the fact that the enemy and the refugees throughout the world are informed daily of the events in Rwanda? The problem with the accomplices is complicated. They work day and night. The Tutsis who live in the country keep helping their brothers to the detriment of the Hutus. Are you aware that even today, our soldiers - your children, your brothers - are still fighting the enemy in the north of the country? Moreover, these Hutus, who come from all the regions of Rwanda, are Inyenzi targets. What information do you send them?

We have noticed that these worldly women work for their Inyenzi-Inkotanyi brothers. The explanation we give is that the refugees who are attacking us are the descendents of the Tutsis who went into exile between 1959 and 1972. Many of those who remained inside the country are related to the Inkotanyi. Nevertheless, several have decided to remain quiet, in regards to their situation, which is far from being favorable. Those who can, operate very discretely. For example by deliberately engaging in improper conduct: handling files improperly, recruiting young men and women and sending them to the Inkotanyi, sending their children and their sisters to the Hutus to obtain information to send to the outside, etc…However, it is unfortunate that those who benefited the most from the unity and peace established by the Hutus participate in a campaign to confuse Tutsis of low rank, so that they do everything in their power to throw off the shackles of the regime… [Illegible] … Kajeguhakwa, Majyambere, Rwigara, Kimenyi and others…After realizing that it was impossible to make puppets of those inside the country, they attacked Rwanda, assisted in their endeavors by Museveni, the guerrilla fighter. Nevertheless, as you have seen and heard, the Rwandan Armed Forces proved themselves invincible. We are appalled by the words of Tutsi detainees amongst the accomplices who spread the rumor that upon their return from the battlefield, the soldiers will exterminate all the accomplices starting with the Inkotanyi -accomplices, their children and their grandchildren. Those are the ones who want to continue waging the war until there are no Hutus civilians or soldiers left in Rwanda, except for their slaves. The Tutsis and the Inyenzi will have conquered the country. Amongst those slaves, I won’t be surprised to see Kanyarengwe, Mbonempka the lawyer, Mugenzi, and all those marginal Hutus I already mentioned who follow the Tutsis blindly. The Inkotanyi use several tactics. As soon as they see that they have lost the armed war, they will use their sisters’ bodies as well as that of their wives and mothers. This has already happened it is appalling! If a young man fornicates with his sister, he is capable of doing so with anyone.

The Hutus should always remember that the Tutsis will never accept defeat or a loss of honor. If needed, all the means will be put into place until their objective has been reached. In fact, isn’t it true that they have been preparing the war that we have been waging for thirty years? Aside from the Hutus who are getting involved in something that is none of their business, what Hutu can claim that he was aware of their plans? Or that he had a role to play during all these years? Or that he was one of those who gave money or who built schools abroad or military camps? Or one of those who sent their children, and so on?

I feel sorry for those Hutus who have fallen into the Inkotanyi trap.

Can Journalism Kill?

Directions: Use the questions below to help you analyze the pieces of journalism and media you were given to analyze.

 Can Journalism Kill?

Share out

Student Presenter: ____________________________________________

Evidence and page: ___________________________________________

• What might have been the goal in creating these materials?

• What messages about the Tutsi did these broadcasts and the cartoon communicate?

• Considering that many of these messages were sent by government agencies, what impact would they have had on both Tutsi and Hutu?

Student Presenter: ____________________________________________

Evidence and page: ___________________________________________

• What might have been the goal in creating these materials?

• What messages about the Tutsi did these broadcasts and the cartoon communicate?

• Considering that many of these messages were sent by government agencies, what impact would they have had on both Tutsi and Hutu?

Student Presenter: ____________________________________________

Evidence and page: ___________________________________________

• What might have been the goal in creating these materials?

• What messages about the Tutsi did these broadcasts and the cartoon communicate?

• Considering that many of these messages were sent by government agencies, what impact would they have had on both Tutsi and Hutu?

Student Presenter: ____________________________________________

Evidence and page: ___________________________________________

• What might have been the goal in creating these materials?

• What messages about the Tutsi did these broadcasts and the cartoon communicate?

• Considering that many of these messages were sent by government agencies, what impact would they have had on both Tutsi and Hutu?

Trial Centers on Role of Press

By Marlise Simons

New York Times    - - - - - - - - - - - -   March 3, 2002

A trial is unfolding far from the spotlight in this East African town, but its outcome may one day ring out around the world. It is the trial of three journalists that focuses on the question; can freedom of speech degenerate into genocide? Or put differently, can journalism kill?

According to prosecutors of the United Nations war crimes tribunal[1] for Rwanda, the answer to both questions is a forceful yes. The three men in the dock, all former Rwandan news media executives, stand accused of genocide and incitement[2] to genocide through their use of radio broadcasts and newspapers.

Their trial is also examining the full scope of the role played by the news media in the massacre of more than 800,000 people in Rwanda in 1994. It is the first time since Julius Streicher, the Nazi publisher of the anti-Semitic weekly Der Stürmer, appeared before the Nuremberg judges in 1946 that a group of journalists stands accused before an international tribunal on such grave charges.

Prosecutors have drawn stark parallels between the vitriolic[3] campaigns against the Jews by Der Stürmer before World War II and the actions of some Rwandan media organizations before and during the 1994 slaughter of the Tutsi. At Nuremberg, the charge of genocide did not yet exist.

Legal specialists believe that the outcome of the current trial may set a crucial precedent[4] for future international cases, in particular for the permanent International Criminal Court, which is expected to open later this year to handle accusations of grave rights violations.

"A key question will be what kind of speech is protected and where the limits lie," said Stephen Rapp, an American lawyer, who is the senior prosecutor in the case. "It is important to draw that line. We hope the judgment will give the world some guidance."

National laws inevitably vary, and as for international legal standards, "there has been no decision since Nuremberg," Mr. Rapp said. The Allies' military court at Nuremberg, which sent Julius Streicher to the gallows, may seem far away and the Rwanda tribunal has no death sentence. But questions about the effects of hateful propaganda and whether journalists should exercise self-restraint or even self-censorship[5] in dangerous moments are topical.

"This is very much a living issue," said a judge at the Rwanda tribunal. "People have found Osama bin Laden's hate talk against Americans objectionable. So why did some American media use self-restraint or even self-censorship in his case? Clearly because there were larger values involved."

The accused in what is informally called here "the media trial" are Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean- Bosco Barayagwiza, who the prosecutors say founded and controlled a Rwandan radio station and directed its news coverage, and Hassan Ngeze, a former newspaper publisher and editor. Prosecutors charge that all three were part of a well- prepared plan to use their outlets first to spread ethnic hatred and then to persuade people to kill their enemies, the Tutsi and moderate Hutu. That required demonizing the Tutsi, prosecutors said, and the media played a key role in accomplishing this.

To make their case, prosecutors have armed themselves with some 50,000 documents, more than 600 audiotapes of what they say are inflammatory[6] broadcasts from Radio Mille Collines and stacks of copies from the pictorial newspaper Kangura, peppered with vicious cartoons and nasty texts.

The radio, nicknamed Radio Hate, was the mouthpiece of the extremist Hutu Power movement. At first, it addressed its Tutsi opponents with warnings like "You cockroaches must know you are made of flesh. We won't let you kill, we will kill you." But once the massacres had begun, the prosecution said, the broadcasts goaded Hutu militia groups to "go to work" and kept inciting people with messages like "the graves are not yet full."

Defense lawyers have rejected the genocide charges and the defendants have pleaded not guilty. John Floyd, an American lawyer defending Mr. Ngeze, denounced the indictments[7] as a "vulgar farce" and "dangerous stuff."

"What's really on trial here is freedom of the press and intellectual freedom," he said. "These people should never have been indicted. They've already been locked up for five years. Just with these indictments, the U.N. is already defending press censorship."

Other lawyers have been more circumspect[8], among them Jean-Marie Biju-Duval, the French defense counsel for Mr. Nahimana. In his view, the central question of the trial is, "At what point, if any, does political propaganda become criminal?"

That issue, however it is defined, may soon also apply to songs. Simon Bikindi, a well known Rwandan singer, has been indicted by the tribunal on charges of genocide. Arrested in the Netherlands, where he was living, Mr. Bikindi is about to be transferred to Arusha. According to his indictment, Mr. Bikindi composed songs that helped foment[9] fear and hatred of the Tutsi. He is also charged with joining militia gangs on their killing sprees.

The media trial, one of the tribunal's high profile cases, has been going on since October 2000, plagued, as other cases here, by management problems. Its prosecutors have changed several times and it may still be months from completion. Some 40 witnesses have already been heard. Complicating matters, two of the defendants opened their own Web sites, and they are reported to have leaked some confidential court data. One defendant, Mr. Barayagwiza, a former government information official, is refusing to show up in court, although his two court-appointed lawyers are attending. He became outraged because other judges had ordered his release, ruling that the prosecution had violated his rights. But after a public outcry in Rwanda and an appeal by the prosecution, that ruling was reversed. He said he would not bother to attend a trial in a court that was politicized and biased.

Prosecutors argue that their case is not about freedom or excess of the press, but about a criminal conspiracy. They say Radio Mille Collines and the newspaper Kangura were as much part of the well-prepared plan to kill Tutsi as was the creation of extremist militias and the importation and distribution of machetes well before the killing began. In Rwanda, a nation of few televisions, radio has enormous power, the prosecutors say.

Witnesses told the court that once the slaughter had begun - it lasted about 100 days - Radio Mille Collines was vital in steering the militia and calling direct hits. They said the station would broadcast the names and addresses of people who were targets along with their vehicle license plates and the hiding places of refugees.

"There was an FM radio on every roadblock, there were thousands of roadblocks in Rwanda," a police investigator said. He told the court that in prison interviews "many people told us they had killed because the radio had told them to kill."

Mr. Rapp, the American prosecutor, said that even in the United States, with its fierce protection of freedom of speech, "if you ordered a hit, using the media, that would not be protected." He drew the analogy of a newspaper that became part of a stock fraud. In such a case, he said, "the issue is not freedom of expression but the crime of fraud." But Mr. Floyd, the American defense lawyer, insisted that "this media trial" was the "most dangerous trial I have ever been in because it may give comfort to despots[10] in the future."

The three judges trying the case, led by Navanethem Pillay of South Africa, will be looking at how hate speech is dealt with in various nations, like the United States, Germany, France and South Africa, "because there is very little precedent in the international field," according to a legal researcher.

The panel is likely to study the Streicher judgment at Nuremberg, the researcher said, but also cases like the United States Supreme Court decision allowing a Nazi group to march through a Jewish neighborhood. An unusual case on the books involves a journalist in France. After World War II, the main announcer of Radio Paris, Jean Herold Paquis, was tried for committing treason with his pro-German broadcasts during the Nazi occupation. He was given the death sentence.

Questions: Answer in full sentences on a separate sheet of paper.

1.     Who is on trial?

2.     Why are they on trial?

3.     To what other cases is this trial being compared? Is this a fair comparison? Explain.

4.     What are the two sides of the argument for this case?

[1] Tribunal – a court of justice

[2] Incitement – encourage or stir up

[3] Vitriolic – cruel and bitter

[4] Precedent – an earlier event that is used as an example for future cases

[5] Censorship – the practice of examining materials and banning things thought to be inappropriate

[6] Inflammatory – arousing an angry and violent response

[7] Indictments – legal charge or accusation

[8] Circumspect – wary and unwilling to take risks

[9] Foment – instigate, stir up

[10] Despots – a ruler who holds absolute power