(RSF/IFEX) – Robert Sebufirira, editor-in-chief of the privately-owned weekly “Umuseso”, and two of the newspaper’s reporters, Elly MacDowell Kalisa and Godfrey Munyaneza, were arrested and jailed in Kigali on 17 and 18 July 2002 after witnessing an incident of police brutality. “Nothing appears to justify these arrests of journalists who were simply doing their job,” […]
(RSF/IFEX) – Robert Sebufirira, editor-in-chief of the privately-owned weekly “Umuseso”, and two of the newspaper’s reporters, Elly MacDowell Kalisa and Godfrey Munyaneza, were arrested and jailed in Kigali on 17 and 18 July 2002 after witnessing an incident of police brutality.
“Nothing appears to justify these arrests of journalists who were simply doing their job,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Rwandan Justice Minister Jean de Dieu Mucyo. “It seems like an excuse in order to once again attack the newspaper and contradicts President Paul Kagame’s recent statements that the country is on the road to democracy,” Ménard added. He called for the journalists’ immediate release and demanded that the charges against them be dropped.
Late on 17 July, the three journalists were chance witnesses to police officers’ roughing up of a man near a bar in the Kiyovu district of Kigali. Bystanders urged the journalists to denounce the police behaviour in their newspaper. When police reinforcements arrived, the witnesses, including the two reporters, were arrested. Sebufirira was arrested and detained the next day after giving a statement to police.
The journalists were accused of interfering with police operations, refusing to obey police orders and breaking a police walkie-talkie. The newspaper, which is disliked by the authorities, has decided to cease publication until the journalists are released. They are due to appear in court before 26 July for a bail hearing. Their trial date is not yet known.
On 18 May, “Umuseso”‘s then-editor-in-chief, Ismael Mbonigaba, was summoned by police in Kacyru and interrogated for seven hours about an article in the newspaper that was considered “insulting” to President Kagame. The newspaper had sarcastically commented on a speech in which the president had called Rwandans “idiots.” Mbonigaba was released later that same day, but his passport was confiscated. He was interrogated again on 25 May and subsequently fled abroad.
President Kagame is included on RSF’s list of international press freedom predators.
