Pierre Havyarimana was stripped of his job as a police officer and given 15 years in jail after shooting a journalist who inquired about a roadblock in Bujumbura.
The following is a CPJ Blog post by Mohamed Keita/CPJ Africa Advocacy Coordinator:
Burundi’s government took unusually swift action last week in response to the police shooting of a radio reporter, after the journalist sought information at a roadblock in the capital Bujumbura where market vendors were allegedly being “taxed” for passage. Perhaps the shooting could have been averted if authorities had bothered to discipline officers involved in previous attacks on journalists.
“It’s because of God that I am alive,” Patrick Paggio Niyonkuru, cultural reporter for leading Burundian independent broadcaster Radio Publique Africaine, told me via telephone this week from a hospital in Bujumbura, where he is still recovering from a bullet wound to his right arm.
Read the full story on CPJ’s website.
