The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the one-year prison sentence imposed on Jean-Léonard Rugambage, a Rwandan journalist who reported alleged corruption among judges in the semi-traditional "gacaca" courts.
GENOCIDE SCAPEGOAT: Belgian Catholic priest Guy Theunis (R), accused of taking part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, talks with an unidentified person inside the high court in Kigali November 8, 2005. Theunis, 60, detained in Rwanda on genocide charges was sent home to face trial for his role in the massacre of 800,000 people.(Reuters/Arthur Asiimwe)Rugambage, a reporter for the fortnightly newspaper Umuco, also faces charges of participation in the 1994 genocide, but CPJ and others believe he is prosecuted in retaliation for his journalistic work.
Umuco, which is based in capital Kigali and publishes mainly in the Rwandan language Kinyarwanda, has been critical of the government. In August, its editor Bonaventure Bizumuremyi was twice held for police questioning following an article in Umuco on police corruption, and a piece that called for the release of detained opposition leader and former president Pasteur Bizimungu. Umuco has been publishing for about a year.
Rugambage was arrested on September 7 on a murder charge said to be related to the genocide. The arrest came two weeks after his August 25 article in Umuco accused gacaca court officials in the Gitarama region of mismanagement and witness tampering.
Gacaca courts, in which suspects are judged by their peers with no recourse to a defence lawyer, were set up to try tens of thousands of genocide suspects who have been languishing in overcrowded jails since the genocide, which left some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead. Human rights activists and independent observers have raised concern that the gacaca courts have given rise to false accusations in some cases.
On November 23, a gacaca court in Gitarama region found Rugambage in contempt after he accused the presiding judge of bias and demanded that the judge step down, according to CPJ sources. The court adjourned Rugambage's trial for alleged participation in the 1994 murder of a local banker, saying he must first serve his sentence for contempt.
Rugambage claimed that the presiding gacaca judge engineered his arrest on the same accusation in 1996, but a judicial court later acquitted him, according to three sources who attended the court hearing. Rugambage said the gacaca judge refused to consider evidence from the 1996 case or hear testimony from witnesses in his defence, the sources said.
"The charges against Jean-Léonard Rugambage appear to be retaliatory and the proceedings biased," CPJ executive director Ann Cooper said. "National gacaca authorities need to look into this disturbing case immediately, release Rugambage, and ensure that any further proceedings are lawful and transparent."
Earlier, on September 19, the police had detained editor Bonaventure Bizumuremyi at the border with Uganda, where Umuco is printed, and took him for questioning. He was released the same evening and he managed to give out some copies of the newspaper for distribution.
GENOCIDE SURVIVOR: A genocide survivor attends a ceremony at the Gisozi memorial in Kigali, April 7 2004. A suspected leader of Rwanda's 1994 genocide surrendered recently to the international court trying the architects of the slaughter. (Reuters/Radu Sigheti)However, the next morning police launched an operation in the capital Kigali to recover those copies. Local media sources said Bizumuremyi had been receiving threats from anonymous phone callers since his release. Police spokesman Théo Badege told Reuters that police confiscated the latest edition of Umuco because it contained "harmful stories based on rumors and sensationalism."
The seized edition carried a series of articles highly critical of the government, according to CPJ sources. One piece alleged that the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front was raising money from civil servants and public institutions in violation of the Constitution.
Another article criticised the imprisonment of journalist Rugambage and that of Belgian priest Guy Theunis, who was arrested at Kigali airport on September 6 and accused of having used his Dialogue publication to incite genocide in 1994. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF), for whom Theunis was Rwanda correspondent in 1992 and 1993, called the charge "absurd" and suggested that "some political score is being settled."
Theunis, who no longer lives in Rwanda, was arrested during a stopover in Kigali airport on his way back to Belgium after attending peace and reconciliation seminars in the neighbouring eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. A member of the Company of Missionaries of Africa, he was the first foreigner to be brought before one of the gacacas.
When he appeared before one of these courts in the Rugenge district of Kigali on September 11, he was classified as a category one suspect accused of high-level responsibility in the genocide and was immediately transferred to Kigali prison. He was alleged to have incited hate and ethnic divisions by quoting passages from the extremist newspaper Kangura in a review of the press in Dialogue. But his sole reason for quoting Kangura was to alert his readers about the hate messages appearing in the extremist news media.
Theunis was released following an accord betwene the Rwandan and Belgian governments. Under the accord, he left Rwanda without an escort on a commercial flight on November 19. On his arrival in Belgium, he was immediately questioned by officials handling the judicial investigation initiated against him in Belgium as a result of the accord. RSF has urged Belgian courts to clear Theunis.
