(RSF/IFEX) – On 23 April 2003, RSF protested the seizure of the weekly “Indorerwamo”‘s (“The Mirror”) first issue and called on Internal Security Minister Jean de Dieu Ntiruhungwa to return the seized copies of the newspaper immediately. “This prior censorship demonstrates that press freedom is not guaranteed in Rwanda,” said Robert Ménard, the organisation’s secretary-general, […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 23 April 2003, RSF protested the seizure of the weekly “Indorerwamo”‘s (“The Mirror”) first issue and called on Internal Security Minister Jean de Dieu Ntiruhungwa to return the seized copies of the newspaper immediately.
“This prior censorship demonstrates that press freedom is not guaranteed in Rwanda,” said Robert Ménard, the organisation’s secretary-general, in a letter to the minister. “Rwanda’s press law does not require prior authorisation to launch a new publication, only a written declaration, which ‘Indorerwamo’ provided,” Ménard noted.
Police seized all the copies of “Indorerwamo” on 22 April, when they arrived from Uganda, at the border with Rwanda. Like most Rwandan publications, the weekly is published in Uganda, where printing costs are cheaper. Copies of other newspapers were allowed in without incident.
“Indorerwamo”‘s representative, who was to take copies of the weekly to Kigali, was detained by police for several hours. The copies of the weekly were sent to police headquarters in Kigali. The paper’s publisher, Ismael Mbonigaba, told RSF that police had given no reason for the confiscation.
Mbonigaba was arrested on 22 January and imprisoned for five weeks for writing in another independent publication, “Umuseso”, that former prime minister Faustin Twagiramungu would stand against President Paul Kagame in the next presidential election (see IFEX alerts of 3 March and 25 February 2003).
The “Umuseso” article was accompanied by a caricature of Kagame, represented as King Solomon, holding the hand of a baby representing the Democratic Republican Movement (Mouvement démocratique républicain, MDR, a political party that is part of the ruling coalition) and a sword in his other hand. Two other people were shown tugging at him and pestering him about how to handle the MDR. The caricature suggested that Kagame is the arbiter of the party’s divisions and that he alone can decide its future.
RSF recalls that President Kagame is included on the organisation’s list of international press freedom predators.
