Media
houses have been shuttered, journalists attacked, and critics of the
government murdered. But one broadsheet is still covering the African
country's descent into chaos.
FP--BUJUMBURA,
Burundi — Christophe Nkezabahizi toiled for years at Radio Télévision
Nationale du Burundi (RTNB), the mouthpiece of a regime that would
eventually kill him along with his entire family.
After
suspected rebels attacked two policemen with grenades, officers went on a
killing spree in Nkezabahizi’s neighborhood. They ordered the
58-year-old cameraman out into the street and shot him execution-style
in front of his wife, two children, and nephew. Nkezabahizi’s wife,
Alice, who had been among the first women to drive a lorry in Burundi,
was then forced onto her knees, along with her two children, one of whom
had a developmental disability, and the nephew, who was training to
become a psychologist.
The officers killed them all, a bullet each to the back of their heads.
The story of the massacre in
Ngagara, a neighborhood in the capital known for its opposition to the
government, where a total of 10 people were killed on Oct. 13, 2015, was
one of a growing number of atrocities that might never have been
exposed if it weren’t for the last independent media outlet still
publishing in Burundi. Even as the government has grown increasingly
heavy-handed, shuttering TV and radio stations not run by the state and
exiling or murdering its critics, the respected newsweekly Iwacu has continued to shine a light on the almost daily killings gripping this tiny Central African nation.
“
Here there is no freedom for independent media. We are the only ones; the others are under the thumb of the government
Here
there is no freedom for independent media. We are the only ones; the
others are under the thumb of the government,” Léandre Sikuyavuga, Iwacu’s
editor in chief, said recently. “Our responsibility is now very big,
since we are trying to fill the gap, trying to speak for those [media
outlets that] were burned down.”
Burundi
was plunged into a virtual domestic media blackout after a failed coup
attempt last May. The plotters announced their takeover on African
Public Radio, one of the most important independent radio stations in
Burundi, prompting supporters of the government to bomb its downtown
headquarters after the putsch unraveled. At least four other radio or
television stations were damaged or destroyed in the mayhem, and several
that had carried news of the coup were ordered to close by authorities.
Since then, attacks on journalists have become commonplace, and at
least 100 have fled to
neighboring countries, according to the Committee to Protect
Journalists. Inside Burundi, only the state-run RTNB, which doesn’t
stray from the government’s messaging, is still broadcasting.
“It’s
incredibly challenging for journalists now in Burundi, and of course
many are simply not able to operate,” said Rachel Nicholson, a
researcher focusing on Burundi at Amnesty International. “The clampdown
on the media is creating a worrying news vacuum and denies Burundians
the free access to information that they have a right to.”
Iwacu suspended
publication for a week after receiving a series of anonymous threats in
the wake of the coup. But otherwise the broadsheet has published
throughout Burundi’s 8-month-old crisis, chronicling the gruesome
aftermath of President Pierre Nkurunziza’s decision to defy protests and
seek a controversial third term in office. With coverage in the
international media sporadic and mostly relegated to the back pages, Iwacu has
produced the definitive first draft of an increasingly dark period in
Burundian history — from the government’s brutal crackdown on
demonstrators in May to the subsequent (and ongoing) spate of
extrajudicial killings to the recent hardening of the protest movement
into an armed rebellion
It has
done so against a backdrop of remarkable hostility toward the press.
Journalists at other media outlets have been arrested and tortured; one
had a grenade flung through her window. At Iwacu,
reporters say one of their colleagues fled the country after receiving
death threats. Another multimedia journalist who asked not to be named
said authorities confiscated his cameras and destroyed some of his
footage. Others said they had received menacing phone calls or had been
warned by security services not to dig too deeply into government
abuses.
Christian
Bigirimana, the lead reporter on the investigation into the RTNB
cameraman’s death, recalled how a government soldier confronted him back
in November. “He approached me back home in my neighborhood and said,
‘You work at Iwacu, and you are messing things up,’” said
Bigirimana. “It wasn’t physical, but I could feel from his body language
that he was threatening me.”
Burundi
does not have a long history with independent media. The first private
radio stations were set up during the country’s 1993-2005 civil war, in
which an estimated 300,000 people were killed. Like in neighboring
Rwanda, where radio played an ignominious role in inciting ethnic
slaughter, Burundians were also called to kill their neighbors over the
airwaves — in particular by Radio Rutomarangingo, based in neighboring
Zaire, now Democratic Republic of the Congo. But more recently the radio
has been used as a tool for reconciliation, and in the mid- to late
1990s a host of media start-ups were launched with the aim of promoting
tolerance and understanding.
Founded
by exiles in Belgium after the assassination of Burundi’s first
democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, in 1993, Iwacu was
part of this first entree into independent media. But published only
abroad, the paper served mainly to keep the diaspora abreast of events
in Burundi. (Iwacu means “at home” in the Kirundi language.) It began
publishing inside the country in 2008 and quickly became the most widely
circulated newspaper.
Still,
in a country where a significant portion of the population is
illiterate, print media has never been able to compete with the
airwaves. An estimated 85 percent of Burundi’s 10 million inhabitants
tune into the radio, many listening on their mobile phones. By
comparison, Iwacuruns off a modest 6,000 copies of every issue —
3,000 in French and 3,000 in Kirundi. This relatively low profile,
along with the professionalism of Iwacu journalists, helps to
explain why the paper has been allowed to keep publishing, even as the
government clamps down on radio and television stations that represent a
greater threat.
But as
the government grows more paranoid about international intervention —
both the United States and European Union have sanctioned individual
Burundian officials and the African Union has threatened to send
peacekeepers — journalists worry the government could move to silence Iwacu as well.
The most troubling sign that the newsweekly is now in the government’s crosshairs came in November, when Iwacu’s
founder and director of operations, Antoine Kaburahe, was picked up for
questioning by prosecutors. He was released and later traveled to
Belgium, but the government has since sought his extradition on charges
stemming from the failed coup attempt. Phone records showing he was in
contact with the ringleaders, the government claims, are proof that he
was in on the plot.
Responding
to questions over email from Belgium, Kaburahe said he wasn’t “even
remotely linked to the coup” and that it should not be considered
suspicious for a journalist to have been in contact with the plotters.
“We
were trying to understand what was happening.… Journalists are there to
inform,” he wrote. Kaburahe lamented what he called a “terrible
regression of freedom of expression” in Burundi, where “those in power
are becoming very nervous and tolerate little criticism.”
A
spokesman for the Burundian presidency did not respond to multiple
requests for comment, but in the past the government has said it is
investigating the role played by independent media outlets during the
attempted coup. Only once these outlets are cleared of any wrongdoing
will they be allowed back on air. “We must first wait for the public
prosecutor to finish his investigation, to identify the losses, and to
catch the perpetrators so [they can] be punished according to the law,”
presidential spokesman Willy Nyamitwe told the website African Arguments last May.
But
more than seven months later the investigation has not been concluded,
and none of the media outlets have been allowed to reopen. Only at Iwacu are the presses still running.
One
morning in early December, a packed newsroom at the paper’s office in
the leafy neighborhood of Rohero was hurtling toward its Thursday print
deadline (the paper hits newsstands on Friday). Editors inspected page
proofs and shouted last-minute queries to reporters typing madly on
their laptops. On the white board above the wooden conference table was a
rough mock-up of the issue: An item on “Consultations Between Burundi
and the EU” was slated to run next to an article on the “Everyday Lives
of the Youth,” a catch-all term for members of the opposition.
But the
article everyone was talking about was to run under the headline “5
Executions in Mutakura.” It was the paper’s latest effort to expose the
government’s relentless campaign of extrajudicial killings.
“This is why we do this,” said one of the reporters who worked on the investigation. “That’s why it’s worth it.”
Photo credit: Ty McCormick/Foreign Policy
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