MEDIA-RWANDA: Journalists Protest Harassment, Intimidation

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Jean Baptiste Kayigamba

KIGALI, Apr 27 1999 (IPS) - Rwandan journalists have appealed to President Pasteur Bizimungu to help end harassment and intimidation of journalists by security agents.

The appeal comes as Rwanda prepares to celebrate the World Day on the Freedom of the Press on May 3.

As a sign of goodwill, the journalists, through the Association Rwandaise des journalistes (ARJ), have urged Bizimungu to release their colleages John Eddie Mugabi, editor of an English monthly Newsline, and Amiel Nkuliza, former “directeur de publication” of Le Partisan.

In a letter to Bizimungu over the weekend, the 50-member ARJ said, “on the eve of the World Day on the Freedom of the Press, we, members of the Association Rwandaise des Journalistes (ARJ), do write to your Excellency, Pasteur Bizimungu, to protest the arrest and detention of our members and colleagues.”

Mugabi was picked up on Feb 26 after writing a story about a top Rwandan army officer, Colonel Frank Rusagara, implicating him in a helicopter deal in which the government reportedly lost about three million US dollars.

Quoting a high-ranking official at the ministry of defence, Mugabi claimed that Rusagara, who is the secretary general of the ministry of defence, “might have obtained a 10 percent commission” out of the deal.

Rusagara has denied the claims.

The case of Nkuliza, who was arrested on May 14, 1997, remains a mystery, notes ARJ in its letter to Bizimungu. “We believe that Mr Amiel Nkuliza is being held under unclear charges, which is yet another way of muzzling the press,” says the association.

“We find this kind of prolonged detention contrary to the law, indeed, a violation of Universal Law on Basic Human Rights and an abuse to the liberties and freedoms of the press,” says the ARJ.

The prolonged detention is already having its toll on the family of Mugabi, who has left behind a one-day-old baby at the time of his arrest, with his wife, who is unemployed.

“While in other countries the press is recognised as the fourth estate in the system of governance, in Rwanda, its role has been misunderstood and often the press is wrongfully used as a tool to achieve personal political ends against the wider interest of the population,” says ARJ.

According to the association, any revelation of corruption by journalists “has often resulted into harassment by state officials, knowingly or unknowingly.”

More than 10 journalists have been detained in Rwanda for their alleged role in the genocide in which up to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu militias in 1994.

They include Noel Hitimana and Joel Hakizimana who were working for the infamous Radio Television des Mille Collines (RTLM) which incited Hutus against Tutsis, Rwanda’s minority ethnic group.

Others have either been killed or have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. One of them, Appolos Kakizimana, a reporter for the monthly newspaper “Indorerwamo” (The Mirror) was shot dead in a bar in Kigali in 1997. Another, Emanuel Munyempanzi, who worked for the state-owned television station, was killed in May 1998 and his body was found near a swimming pool in Kigali.

Manasse Mugabo, who was working for the United Nations radio in Kigali, went missing in August 1995. Another, Jean Felix Zigirinshuti worked for the official ‘Imvaho’ newspaper before he disappeared in May 1998.

Government officials claim that Mugabo and Zigirinshuti might have joined the armed Hutu rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

At least four journalists have fled the central African country since the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) seized power in 1994. They include Boniface Murutampunzi of Radio Rwanda who sought asylum in France in 1996, and his colleague Jean Jules Cesar Dushimiyimana who fled to Canada.