Radio Agatashya (August 1994–October 1996) prepared the ground for the creation of Fondation Hirondelle. The station was created by Swiss journalists, members of the Swiss branch of Reporters Without Borders, who oversaw its installation in Bukavu on Rwanda’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire, at the time). The goal of the station was to assist victims of the April 1994 Rwandan genocide massacres. In Ikinyarwanda, agatashya means swallow, which is how Fondation Hirondelle got its name. Swallows are a symbol of good news and hope in Rwandan culture, and the name was chosen by the Tutsi and Hutu team members working together at the station.
The concept of this independent radio station was presented in May 1994 at the Human Rights Council in Geneva as an alternative to hate media in Rwanda, in particular Radio des Milles Collines, which was broadcasting the propaganda of the Habyarimana regime. Initial funding was provided by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Attempts to obtain a broadcast licence in Rwanda and Burundi were unsuccessful.
Broadcasting began on the 4th of August 1994 with 3 hours of programming in the morning and another 3 in the afternoon in Ikinyarwanda, French and, from the 13th of August, in Swahili. The project’s initial humanitarian objective was soon reinforced by rigorous fact-based reporting without commentary, which gradually characterised the station’s editorial approach. The team was made up of Rwandans and Zairians assisted by Swiss journalists. In September 1994, the Rwandan government granted Radio Agatashya permission to open a news desk in Kigali, but, as a new media law was in the offing, the station was still not given a licence to broadcast from the Rwandan capital.
In April 1995, Fondation Hirondelle was created by Philippe Dahinden, Jean-Marie Etter and François Gross, the Swiss journalists who had founded Radio Agatashya. The trio formally took on management of the project, and the broadcast network expanded, with transmitters added in Goma and Uvira. At the time, Radio Agatashya’s potential audience numbered over 4 million. A partnership agreement with UNHCR led the station to participate in a mass information campaign for Rwandan refugees. In Burundi, a productive collaboration was established with Studio Ijambo, a station created by the US NGO Search for Common Ground. In November 1995, Radio Agatashya became a regional radio station reaching audiences in Kivu, Rwanda and Burundi (up to Bujumbura). In September 1996, heavy artillery fire marked the beginning of fighting between Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s forces, supported by the Rwandan army, and the Zairian troops of Marshal Mobutu. After fighting took place around the main transmitter on October 27th, 1996, broadcasts were suspended and never resumed.
Despite this, Fondation Hirondelle continued to provide news to the region’s population, setting up Hirondelle News Agency, a permanent press agency, in 1997 at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania.
All of Radio Agatashya’s programmes are stored in Fondation Hirondelle’s archives and were digitised from the audio tapes in 2020. Our long-term objective is to make these historic archives available to researchers and academics.
Financial resources:
- Switzerland