News

Pakistan under the spotlight: Is the money getting to where it needs to go?

2010-09-02T12:43:10Z

Pakistan is still reeling from the devastating floods that have seen one fifth of the country become submerged. More than $800 million has been pledged through international donations.

But allegations abound that some of the money pledged is not reaching the problem areas, through corruption and mismanagement - a thorny subject tackled at Frontline Club event last night.

If you couldn't join us for this event, you can watch the lively Q&A session here:

Asif Durrani, Pakistan's Deputy High Commissioner in the UK, admitted that corruption was a problem but argued that funds - including a $10 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund in 2008 - had been spent on legitimate projects. "I'm not denying that there won't be corruption... but It's not that bad - though perceptions are bad and that needs to be corrected," he said.

Asked whether there is a risk that money donated or loaned to the country to help its dire situation, Brice de le Vingne, Médecins Sans Frontières operation manager for Pakistan, said: "There is a risk because already Pakistan was not that stable. And this will just increase the instability."

Karen Pierce, Foreign Office director for Afghanistan and South Asia, said that "In any ent of thie type there is a risk of diversion [of money] - I don't think the risk in Pakistan is any greater in this crisis than in any other."

But Pierce outlined the "circular" problem of Pakistan's lack of infrastructure investment due to its longstanding battle against terrorism:

There wasn't a lot of infrastructure development going into the border areas to start with, partly because of the security problem... which is one reason the economy in Pakistan is distorted.

Catch up with wha the the UK Foreign Office is doing in Pakistan at its Facebook and Twitter pages and at the UK in Pakistan website.

The Resonance and Peculiarity of Vietnam

2010-09-01T14:32:07Z

By Benedict Nagle-Taylor

Photograph: Chris King

An opening clip from Michael Nicholson's ITV series, Back to the Front was shown to set the scene for the evening and was followed by our panellists recalling their experiences of Vietnam, from their initial bewilderment of its size and complexity, to their realisation of the graphic carnage around them.

Nicholson then opened the floor to discussion, with highlights of the night including input from fellow reporters and journalists, most notably a former reporter for a Saigon news agency.

Vietnam's resonance and peculiarity provided continuous stimulation for discussion and with a wealth of experience and memory to call upon, the panellists provided numerous anecdotes and stories of their time in Vietnam, none more entertaining than John Laurence's recollection of fellow reporter Sean Flynn disassembling a live short-fuse grenade for a group of journalists.

The panellists continued to field insightful questions from the audience, covering the change in the perception of journalists and the power the press had over the public, punctuated with Patrick Chauvel's insistence that the press made the war end and later that they held power to account by reporting the truth.

But the ease of access that journalists had enjoyed before, Jon Swain noted, changed and where before he was taxied to the war on the frontline in an army helicopter, now a press officer armed with a multi-page declaration would stand in his way.

"There frequently exists a state of war between us [the media] and them [the military]," Nicholson observed in his opening remarks, and Chauvel concurred:

What has changed is the perception of the fighter of us. They know what you are, they know what you are doing whereas before they didn't.

The evening ended with a clip from Chauvel and Antoine Novat's film Rapporteurs de Guerre. It included an interview with the Life Magazine photographer Larry Burrows, whose helicopter was shot down in Vietnam, summarising the evening aptly:

"So often I wonder whether it is my right to capitalise, as I feel so often, on the grief of others. But then I justify in my own particular thoughts by feeling that if I can contribute little of the feeling of what others are going through then there's a reason for doing it.

If you were not able to be at the event, you can watch it or listen to the podcast.

Upcoming paper on the BBC's coverage of the Mumbai attacks

2010-09-01T14:00:52Z

Just a note to let you know that later this month I'll be speaking about the BBC's coverage of the Mumbai attacks in 2008.

The paper is a case study of the BBC's adoption of live text commentary to report breaking news. Indeed, Mumbai was the first time the BBC had used a 'live-blogging' format to cover a major terror attack.

I'll be giving the talk at Westminster University's 'Global Media and the "War on Terror"' conference on 14th September.

Abstract

The emergence of instant global communication technology has placed pressure on competing media organisations to publish news information at great speed (Gowing, 2009). In the event of an ongoing breaking news crisis, online journalists have begun to adopt live updates or live blogs as a way of disseminating news information quickly from a variety of sources (Newman, 2009).

The BBC’s use of this format during the Mumbai attacks in 2008 was the first time the organisation had used live updates to cover a major terror attack. The BBC’s coverage won an Online News Association award and appeared popular with the online audience. The live update pages, however, raised a number of editorial questions both within (Herrmann, 2008) and outside the Corporation (Sutcliffe, 2008).

The inclusion of audience material from Twitter was a particular concern. Based on a content analysis of the BBC’s Mumbai live update pages, interviews with journalists who worked on the story and internal documents, this paper considers the impact that ‘live blogging’ a terror attack has on the BBC’s editorial process and journalism.

The paper demonstrates that the imperative of ‘getting news out there’ meant BBC journalists often published news material on the live update pages on the basis of a single source using attribution to distance the BBC from the accuracy of the information.

It also argues that the concept of ‘news as conversation’ is limited by the context of a breaking news security story where a serious tone is expected and careless reporting might jeopardise human life. Although the ‘live blog’ format did facilitate the inclusion of audience comment, the extent to which it should be included was contested both on practical and editorial grounds.

The Gun Always Shines on TV

2010-09-01T09:56:50Z

The US webmag Gawker recently published a video survey of Army recruitment videos from around the world. The most entertaining was this ad for the Ukrainian Army, which basically promises young men that they will score with the girls if they drive a big tank and fondle their gun barrel suggestively enough (although the clip itself looks remarkably like a spoof). What was missing from the survey, however, was this classic ad for the Georgian Army (see above), which links military service to the country’s ancient Christian warrior traditions.

Here in Georgia, the authorities are rather fond of making promotional videos, with specially-commissioned, zealously patriotic songs to accompany them, such as this recent police recruitment advert. The biggest-budget Georgian promo of all time, however, looks set to be Hollywood veteran Renny Harlin's forthcoming action movie about the war with Russia in 2008, Georgia. Those wondering which angle the film will take on the controversial conflict should bear in mind that the film was co-produced by an MP in Mikheil Saakashvili's government, who was then promoted to a ministerial role after the film wrapped.

First Wednesday: Why Pakistan matters

2010-08-31T10:51:58Z

This Wednesday we turn our attention again to the crisis unfolding in Pakistan. With more than 14 million people displaced by relentless floods and disease spreading through the country, our First Wednesday event for September with chair Paddy O'Connell will look at the disaster with a wide lens and ask what the prospects are for a shattered nation.

Joining us is Karen Pierce, the Foreign Office director for Afghanistan and South Asia, to talk about what the UK's involvement in the crisis is. The FCO was already very active in the region, as you can see from its Facebook page, Twitter account and the UK in Pakistan page.

Brice de le Vingne, Médecins Sans Frontières operation manager for Pakistan is also joining the panel to talk about MSF's work in the region.

But the country is beset with other problems too: political instability and the threat of terrorism. Pakistan is cited as a home of Islamic militants and accused of David Cameraon of "looking both ways" when it comes to rooting out extremists or turning a blind eye.

The historic link between Pakistan and the UK has perhaps never been closer, through our own foreign policy aims and decades of migration. And for journalists who like to keep on top of worldaffairs, it's hard to think of a nation more deserving of analysis and discussion right now. So join us on Wednesday to help us do just that.

Tickets and a full line-up are available here.

Reporting Vietnam: 'We don't only work for the news, we work for the memory'

2010-08-31T09:48:27Z

By Gouri Sharma

The only victory for the media during the Vietnam War was that the public decided it never wanted to see those images and stories again. That was a central theme at a Frontline event on Friday to mark the 35 years of the end of the Vietnam war.

If you couldn't be with us for this event, then you can watch the whole thing here:

Photojournalist Patrick Chauvel, joining the panel of people who captured haunting images of the conflict, said:

What the public does not want to see and suffer (now) is because the images, the writing and the footage of the Vietnam war is right there and is still there. That's our only victory. The people are afraid to see another burned young woman. We don't only work for the news, we work for the memory as well.

But the journalists on the panel admitted they missed many incidents and swallowed the US military line that the war was over in 1973 because Americans weren't being killed any more. This was despite the fact that there were many Vietnamese civilians still being killed in their thousands over a year later

Joining Patrick on the night were veteran war correspondents Jon Swain, John Laurence and Michael Nicholson.

The night was opened by an eight minute clip of a Granada TV special on the war hosted by Nicholson from three years ago, where he returned to Vietnam to look how places had changed. Chauvel also showed eight of his images from Vietnam and Cambodia plus an interview with English photographer Larry Burrows, who is regarded as one of the best photographers to have covered the war and was killed in a helicopter attack in Laos in 1971.

Jon Swain said:

This was a defining war that America lost and after that the world really changed. America never fought a war in the same way and never let the press in the same way. It was a defining moment of how wars were covered and I think TV has alot to do with that and after that came all these films.

Embedded with the Taliban

2010-08-27T12:03:08Z

Discussions around embedded journalism in Afghanistan tend to focus on journalists joining up with NATO or U.S. forces but what about the view we get from an embed with the Taliban?

In the video below, Norwegian journalist Paul Refsdal risks his life to film Taliban operations with a commander in Eastern Afghanistan. There's some intriguing footage here including an attack on a U.S. convoy and snapshots of everyday life.

Throughout the group's ideological commitment to the cause stands out: "We fight for freedom, our religion Islam and its principles. We are fighting for the freedom of our land...Allah the All-Powerful will destroy them as He did many other great powers".

But the film humanises 'the enemy'. We see Commander Dowran's young children and the Taliban sharing food and prayers together.

Other images are more troubling as we see very young men carrying weapons along with their elders.

In an online chat hosted by SBS Dateline Refsdal said he did:

"...not go to make propaganda, neither for the Taliban nor against them. I entered their area with an open mind, and even though I was surprised by how “normal” they were, tried to report as objectively as possible what I observed with them."

Refsdal was kidnapped two weeks later by a commander called Omar but released without a ransom being paid.

Gideon Levy in conversation with Jon Snow: why the media's role in the occupation of Palestine matters

2010-08-26T11:35:23Z

With a protracted, complex and bloody conflict between Israel and Islamic forces in Palestine, the need for independent journalism has never been greater. Isreali journalist Gideon Levy says that when he started writing, "There [was] no one there to tell the Israelis what they don't want to hear."

Levy, who spoke to Channel 4's Jon Snow at a Frontline event last night, says that the Israeli media plays a far more important role in the conflict than many would like to admit.

If you couldn't be there in person, you can watch the whole thing here:

Mid-Ramadan in Mogadishu is Just Another Bloody Day

2010-08-24T12:50:28Z

It is the eve of the 15th night of the holy month of fasting in the Islamic calendar, but the families of at least 33 people killed in Tuesday’s attack will be mourning rather than feasting.

Al-Shabab gunmen disguised as government forces stormed the Muna hotel close to the presidential palace and opened fire. One of attackers then blew himself up inside the hotel killing at least 33 people including six MPs.

The AU deputy special representative for Somalia, Wafula Wamunyinyi, announced on Monday that hundreds of additional troops began arriving on Friday to bolster the 6,000 AU forces that supports the Somali government.

This latest surge in troops was met with the new offensive from Al-Shabab after a spokesperson said on Monday the group was declaring a "massive war" on the AU force, describing its 6,000 troops as "invaders".

According to health officials, at least 53 people were killed in the fighting and more than 130 wounded, with shells fired into residential areas.

Whatever the political motives, the majority of the people dying on an almost daily basis are undeniably the civilians. The same civilians the rebels are fighting to liberate from “invaders”. They are the same civilians the government and its allies are also claiming to protect and serve.

The country has been in a perpetual state of conflict since the collapse of its central government in 1991. The government is reliant on the AU troops for its very existence without which it would be likely to collapse. The presence of troops however fuels the rebels who see them as an occupying force.If this political catch 22 is not resolved soon, then Somalis will continue to witness one bloody day after another.

Iraq revisited: What next for the Forgotten War?

2010-08-19T10:57:22Z

Picture: Chris King

By Sara Williams

As the last full US combat brigade rumbled out of Iraq, what comes next for the region and its people, and what is the legacy of this long and divisive conflict?

A Frontline Club panel got together to discuss just that on Wednesday night, discussing Iraq's recovery and reconciliation and some of the the darker episodes from the war.

If you couldn't be with us for this event, you can watch the whole thing here:

Chair Tim Lambon read a particularly harrowing section of panelist Jim Frederick’s book Black Hearts, in which four US soldiers -- neglected, unsupervised and pushed to the brink -- plan a rape and multiple murder.

Frederick’s book documents a serious breakdown in leadership, something fellow panelist Sir Hillary Synnott acknowledged as the very bedrock of the military, an institution that tends to attract broken young men seeking father figures:

Soldiers need to be led actively, and if that father is himself broken, then the system breaks down. The officer corps must be maintained, placing a great deal of emphasis on integrity.

The incident offers lessons for military leadership, but panel members looked beyond these to identify next steps for the region and for the international community.

For John Sloboda, co-founder of the Iraq Body Count Project, the central problem is one of context -- that the stories of this war are being told from the wrong perspective. "This war isn’t an American tragedy or a British tragedy but an Iraqi tragedy," he said.

Both Sloboda and Iraqi author Haifa Zangana attested that the attention paid to Iraqi casualties had been pitiful. For Zangana, this wasn’t new: "The blackout on Iraqi voices has been there since the beginning," she said.

The panel broadly agreed that something needed to be done to bridge the gap between all sides and to enable Iraqis to move past the scenes described in Frederick’s book. Sloboda cited the census conducted after the Bosnian war as a successful and necessary step towards reconciliation in a post-war country:

Every civilian victim of this war and all wars, wherever they are in the world, deserved to be properly memorialised.

Lambon referred to the Iraq war as "the forgotten war" and some commentators (see this in the American Journalism Review) have questioned how such a huge event as the end of the war hasn't been much noticed by the press or public..

Zangana warned that Iraqi youths were becoming powerfully anti-West -- "Moderate, sensible people are disappearing," she warned -- while Sir Hilary referred to the Pashtun obligation to avenge one death with another. "And what have we been doing? Killing civilians".

Yet perhaps, in the end, the withdrawal will be a case of handing reconstruction over to the people still standing. Frederick was pragmatic:

Unless there is a dramatic increase in violence, I don’t think that the American public will pay much attention to Iraq from [now on]... Iraq has much hard work ahead of it and a lot of that work is going to be done by Iraqis.

Here's the Twitter stream from last night's event:

The small acts of mischief that could change the world

2010-08-18T10:48:51Z

Challenging the pessimistic view that "nothing can ever change" was partly the purpose of last night's event looking at small acts of resistance around the world that have gone on to have greater impact.

If you couldn't make it to the club for this event, you can watch it here:

Ahead of the publication next month of his book, Small Acts of Resistance, Steve Crawshaw, international advocacy director at Amnesty International, described the ways people have challenged the powerful while showing "an unbelievable sense of mischief and wit".

Even in the most horrendous circumstances people will, perhaps especially, show unbelievable wit - in effect saying 'you may come and arrest me but I will make a mockery of you at the same time.

Saeed Kamali Dehghan, an Iranian journalist who writes frequently for the Guardian described how Iranian men have posted photos of themselves wearing the hijab in a campaign to free the student Majid Tavakoli, who was photographed wearing women's clothes after it was claimed he had dressed as a woman to avoid arrest.

Tin Htar Swe, head of the BBC Burmese Service explained how rank and file soldiers are disobeying orders and refusing to return to headquarters in protest at having their pay stopped: "The generals are very concerned about it and don't know what to do about it because if they allow the soldiers to take their money all they will do is take it and run away, they will desert with it."

Alice Ukoko, founder and CEO of Women Of Africa, highlighted the women of Liberia whose peaceful protest in 2003 forced President Charles Taylor into peace talks and the women of Niger delta who protested against the oil company Shell.

"Unfortunately the armed police came, but the women said they would not run and because of that single act things changed, people became aware, the world became aware."

How Wikileaks is changing journalism

2010-08-13T10:26:09Z

Tensions were revealed in the relationship between some of the news organisations that collaborated with the whistleblowing organisation Wikileaks in publishing the Afghan War Diary when its founder Julian Assange spoke at a Frontline Club event last night.

Speaking via Skype at a discussion hosted by Paddy O'Connell, presenter of BBC Broadcasting House, Assange said the New York Times articles and its portrayal of US soldier Bradley Manning had been "disgusting".

Assange confirmed that Wikileaks would publish some of the 15,000 documents held back when 70,000 were published on 25 July in conjunction with the New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel. But it was an "expensive time consuming process" checking the material and they were only "half way" through, Assange said.

"So far there has been no help despite repeated requests, from the White House or the Pentagon, or in fact any of the three press organisations we partnered with for this material," said Assange, who added that the cost could be up to £750,000. "They decided not to take responsibility for getting the raw data out to the public, that is in fact what appears our role, to get the raw data out as opposed to the cherries the organisations decided selectively to give out in relation to their stories."

Simon Rogers, editor of the Guardian's Datablog said they had thought "long and hard" about the decision whether to publish all of the raw data: "Often it's our job to choose what we think is interesting and important. On the legal side we are based in London and you can find us."

Media lawyer Mark Stephens, who said that Wikileaks' release of documents represented "a new challenge to the traditional form of journalism" added that news organisations may move to find the most sympathetic jurisdictions.

"They may have to move or segregate themselves, so the Guardian may still be in York Way but the internet part or data dump will have to be based in Iceland."

The demands of the Pentagon in a press conference last week that Wikileaks hand over documents raised questions about the world's press, said Assange: "Is it going to be a serious response or is it going to simply put its head in the sand?"

The Wikileaks case also reinforced the fact that journalists "could no longer afford to be innumerate," said FOI journalist and author Heather Brooke. "If you don't know how to deal with electronic data you are only half way literate."

Brooke also argued that the release of the documents showed us that we have to renegotiate the way we view people in power and also showed up some of the weaknesses of the mainstream media:

"The media has generally abdicated its responsibility as the fourth estate and in a number of ways it has let down the public, it doesn't act in the interest of the general public, it's become coopted by special interests and people in power."

Watch the full event here:

Neither friend nor foe: Google is just the messenger

2010-08-13T09:00:03Z

By Jasper Jackson

Google’s online dominance puts it at the heart of forces undermining the traditional news publishing industry.

But a Frontline Club panel on Google’s relationship with publishers on Wednesday focused on the wave of technological change behind the search giant that means the industry must "innovate or die".

If you couldn't be there on the night, you can watch the whole thing here:

Trinity Mirror's digital content director Matt Kelly said that newspapers were "blinded" by the internet’s ability to expand readership, but they are confusing reach with audience.

He said building an engaged audience of returning readers was far more important than attracting "transient" site traffic from Google, and can deliver higher ad revenues.

I’d much rather have one click from Twitter than a 100 clicks from Google because it means that somebody said 'check this out, this is fun this is good'. We built [gossip site] 3am.co.uk deliberately to perform badly in search engines.

Google UK's head of PR and communications and former Newsnight editor Peter Barron conceded that Google may not have cooperated effectively with publishers in the past. However, he blamed what Kelly referred to as an "arrogant" approach on the company's rapid expansion - which outstripped its ability to recruit enough staff, something the firm has now corrected.

Barron also challenged the assumption that Google is opposed to charging for content: "There is a lot of mythology that we stand for everything must be free on the web - that’s not the case. There are lots of great things on the web that people pay for all the time."

PaidContent:UK editor Robert Andrews said he admired the "ballsiness" of Rupert Murdoch’s paywall experiment, but he said everyone is asking: "What is Rupert Murdoch’s plan B?" He said there was every chance that papers in their current form could be wiped out by what was essentially a broad economic shift.

There was no great ball newspapers dropped when moving online. This was just a different medium, and newspapers had no divine right to come and dominate it.

Wired and Press Gazette columnist Peter Kirwan stressed that papers may only be saved by switching to an online model where operating costs match the reduced income from switching from print ads to online: "The possibility of a digital-only business is starting to open up."

Social networking and journalism: Power to the people?

2010-08-11T13:51:26Z

By Julie Tomlin and Sirena Bergman

How have Facebook, Twitter and blogs changed changed grassroots politics? This was the question tackled at the club on Tuesday, at an event moderated by Deborah Bonello, founder of Mexicoreporter.com and video journalist for the Financial Times.

If you couldn't be with us for this event, you can watch the whole thing here:

Sunny Hundal, editor of Liberal Conspiracy, cited social media scrums such as the Twitter campaign following Jan Moir's comments in the Daily Mail about Boyzone singer Stephen Gately; complaints over a BBC World Service messageboard asking if homosexuals should be executed and the campaign to stop Rod Liddle becoming editor of the Independent as examples of how social media can be used to mobilise support on an issue.

But Mike Harris, director of the Libel Reform Campaign, said that these were "quick wins": "Social media is very effective in short term campaigns but it hasn't converged around a single nexus in the longer term," he said. "I'm concerned that the power of the quick win comes to dominate."

His suggestion that social media would only "come of age" when campaigns were influencing the detail of legislation was disputed by Benjamin Chesterton of Duckrabbit who argued that "It goes far beyond minutiae of policy - therer are so many things beyond politics and policy that people are getting involved in."

Sina Motalebi, of BBC Persian TV, was imprisoned for 23 days in Tehran's Evin prison and released after thousands of people signed an online petition argued against reducing "social media to our political expectations". Responding to the suggestion that Western media had over-hyped the impact of Twitter in the protests following last year's Presidential election, Motalebi said:

I don't think it was unsuccessful in Iran.I know some Iranians are disappointed and are asking this fast-moving buzz, did it change anything? It has: it brought the exclusive power away from the media. I don't think it can change a government but it can change some of the characteristics of a society and open things up for people whose day job is to create change.

Rwanda decides but what next?

2010-08-10T12:16:24Z

There was no discussion about who would win Rwanda's 2010 Presidential election among Rwandan and foreign hacks as we drove through the eastern provinces yesterday afternoon. As we passed shuttered polling stations, the betting began.

How much would President Paul Kagame win by? By 5pm, we'd heard three preliminary results from three separate polling stations. The consensus in the car put the win at around 96%. I'll admit, I went for a 90% Kagame win purely for pragmatic reasons. As far as I understand it, and please correct me if I'm wrong, the opposition parties need 5% of the vote each to secure government funds to stay in existence.

If the preliminary result of almost 93% for Kagame stands, I'm not sure what it will mean for the opposition, such as it is,

According to the preliminary results released by the National Electoral Commission, President Kagame won by 92.9 percent. The PSD candidate, Dr. Jean Damascene Ntawukuriryayo, has 4.9 %, Prosper Higiro from the Liberal party (PL) 1.5 % and the PPC candidate, Dr Alvera Mukabaramba 0.7 %. link

Now we know the result - roughly the same as the result in the 2003 election - let's look at some of the more unreported issues around the election and also what the result means for Rwanda and the region going forward.

Campaign period

The crowds at the RPF campaign rallies were colossal. This show of strength was aimed at three audiences. To Rwandans, it emphasizes the strength and perceived popularity of the RPF. To foreign observers, it's a fantastic piece of PR for the ruling party. In addition, and most importantly according to western diplomatic sources, this impressive show of support was directed at "enemies of Rwanda outside Rwanda".

On the quirkier side, the fact that (at least one rally in Muhanga) by the Liberal party was funded by the RPF seems to have gone unnoticed by all media outlets bar Reuters. Even though it supports the over-riding media narrative that there is no convincing opposition,

At one Liberal Party rally, which attracted 200-300 people, an official said the event was funded and organized by Kagame's ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). She too would vote for the incumbent, the official added. link

Rwanda PR machine melts down

It was just late 2009 when the head of a western NGO talked to me about how incredible Rwanda's PR machine is. "How do they run their ship so tightly?", she asked. Well, 2010 saw that ship all but sink. It's unclear whether any amount of professional shoring up will stop the tide of bad press, at least in the short term. How did it happen and happen so quickly?

This BBC report, in particular, was damning. However, it's the links, more perceived than proven, of recent events being made by western media that have probably been most damaging.

Grenade attacks, defections, assassinations, press freedom and repression of political opposition... they are regularly bundled into your average Rwanda story. There is no proof (that I know of) linking any of these events, but the portrayal by western media often leaves readers with the impression that some or all of these events can be linked and linked back to the government.

For example, the common narrative with the banning of Umuseso and Umuvugizi newspapers for six months is that this is a bad thing. However, I'm reliably told that both Umuseso and Umuvugizi regularly fabricated entire stories and made up quotes. Sure, the 6 month ban looks draconian, but it's clear these papers were, at best, unprofessional.

Another case is Victoire Ingabire's FDU-Inkingi Party party which was not allowed to register for the Presidential election. She has been held under house arrest and had her passport taken away. Western media outlets often portray this as blatant suppression without looking at some of the more damaging facts. Ingabire refuses to divulge how her party is financed and she is President of two somewhat dodgy Rwanda diaspora parties - the RDR and FDU.

Ingabire is president of two Rwandan émigré parties based in Europe. One is the RDR, the other the FDU; they are essentially the same, save for the alphabet-soup acronym intrigue of émigré politics. Both are the descendents of the RDR party established in 1995 in eastern Congo by Rwandan military leaders of the 1994 genocide against the minority Rwandan Tutsi. Their intent was to replace, with less compromised faces, the Rwandan interim government that had committed the genocide and then retreated to eastern Congo.

The founding RDR ideology and strategy, never repudiated since 1995, is to return the genocide perpetrators and their supporters to power in Rwanda by force or by negotiation. Ingabire’s predecessor as RDR president in Europe, Charles Ndereyehe, is the subject of an Interpol warrant for genocide crimes committed against Tutsis in 1994. Ingabire’s RDR and FDU have long had ties with the FDLR in eastern Congo. link

Election day

Most foreign hacks stayed in Kigali for election day. This is largely because of the need to feed the media agenda; get the buzz in the capital, film the President casting his ballot, await preliminary results and make sure you have time to get to the 7pm victory party at Amahoro Stadium in the capital. The schedule doesn't allow for the parachuted-in foreign correspondent, who might be unfamiliar with Rwanda, to get out of the capital on election day. However, for those of us that did, the Kigali "showboat election" as one western diplomat described it, wasn't necessarily mirrored across the country,

In at least one incident, however, voters were ushered into polling stations hours before voting officially opened and instructed to vote for Kagame. "The first picture on the ballot sheet was Kagame. We were told to take their thumbs and show them where to vote. I know personally because I oversaw 83 people," said one man identifying himself as a village chief and RPF member. A second man in the same village in Rwanda's Eastern province told Reuters he used a megaphone to order sleeping residents to vote: "Wake up, go to vote early, the one you have to vote for, you know him." link

Going forward I'll blog some more thoughts on Rwanda's prospects over the coming months and years when I've had more time to digest recent news and events. However, I suspect any election quibbles will very soon be forgotten. Whichever ever way you cut it, this was an emphatic victory. The President has already stated that Rwanda is not ready for the medicine of democracy and given the country's unique history he may well be right. Time, or the next seven years at least, will tell. The Christian Science Monitor has a good initial analysis of Rwanda's role regionally over the coming years,

Seen by the US, Britain, and increasingly by France as a reliable strategic partner in Africa, Kagame would appear to have a secure position. But a string of defections and arrests of top Rwandan military and government officials, and assassination attempts against Kagame’s critics, are starting to leave a bad taste in the mouth of even those African leaders who once voiced their solidarity and support. link

And Reuters has a useful "snap analysis",

Some analysts say Kagame must repair his image following the crackdown on political opponents and critical media ahead of the vote and prove he is not just another African strongman with a slick international public relations machine. They say the bush war veteran will need to convince foreign donors and investors that he remains committed to his promise of democratising the country to ensure the impressive development seen over the past decade will be maintained. Analysts say Rwanda can expect far more foreign direct investment if it improves democratic accountability in the years to come rather than taking an increasingly autocratic line. link

Lastly, I'll leave you with one abiding memory of this intriguing election period in Rwanda - the campaign trail dust. As filmed on the road to a PSD rally in Karenge. I'm still washing it out...

This post was originally published on my Rwanda news and photojournalism blog Kigali Wire. Photo of Hereward Holland (Reuters), Max Delaney (AP) and Finbarr O'Reilly (Reuters) taken from the Kigali Wire Flickr account.