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"They
like me in here," editor Jean-Claude Kavumbagu said of his fellow prisoners.
But sub-Saharan Africa's only jailed online journalist still pays protection
money to stay safe in Bujumbura's Mpimba Prison.
The Net Press editor has been here since police arrested him on July 17. He was charged with treason over an article that questioned the competence of Burundi's security services.
After much bureaucratic back-and-forth, the authorities allowed a CPJ delegation to meet with Kavumbagu, who was much thinner than he appears in his picture posted on Net Press. He was brought out to meet us in a yard in front of the main gate, where the prison's governor sat at a wooden table under a tin roof shelter receiving petitions from visitors.
Kavumbagu, stooped and seeming much
older than his 45 years, greeted the governor who motioned us to chairs at the
foot of the prison wall, well out of his earshot.
Kavumbagu wore a clean green prison
uniform and glasses. He spoke softly but became animated when talking about the
government of President Pierre Nkurunziza that put him into this prison, built
for 800 but now housing 3,500 inmates ranging from conmen to killers.
"I'm okay," he said when asked about his
health, although he looked frail. "I share a cell with a man accused of robbery
and we get along."
As a journalist among common criminals
he's something of a celebrity and not harassed. But he does pay the equivalent
of several dollars a week for protection. "There are people in here who go
crazy on drugs," he said. He has access to radio and books. "Newspapers are a
different story. I think the guards think they are political tracts and keep
them from me."
Asked
why he has been repeatedly refused bail and is being treated as a criminal for
publishing an opinion piece, Kavumbagu says it's payback for a decade of
criticism of the former Hutu rebels who now make up the government. Net Press, launched in
1999, referred to the rebels as "genocidal terrorists" for their treatment of
minority Tutsi civilians during the civil war that finally reached a ceasefire
agreement in 2003.
"My case is
completely political," he said, adding that the article criticizing the army
was just a pretext to silence him. "This is their revenge," he said.
Five consecutive governments have
arrested him for his reporting. "Arbitrary arrests must stop. This is my fifth
time but I have never been convicted."
Kavumbagu said the only way he would
leave Mpimba was through international pressure on the government. "The judiciary is not independent," he said. "The
international community must exert pressure on the government and the head of
state to change this country."
If
convicted of treason, Kavumbagu could face life imprisonment. No date has been
set for his trial.
He
brightened visibly when asked about his news site.
"It's
still going," he said, thanks to a small editorial staff of six. Net Press is tiny but influential,
reaching the French-speaking elite here and the Burundian diaspora. "We get
about 800 visitors a day," he said proudly.
Kavumbagu
said he was buoyed by international support and by the solidarity shown by his
colleagues in the Burundian media. My message to them is: "Do not give in to
fear."
(Reporting from Bujumbura)
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Hi Rob - thanks for doing this excellent piece. I've been in touch with Jean-Claude since 2002 and he's helped me enormously over the years with my efforts to get to the bottom of a massacre in which my sister was killed in December 2000. On the 28th of this month, the 10th anniversary of that attack, I'll be doing my best to highlight Jean-Claude's case - more details here: http://richardwilsonauthor.wordpress.com
Good piece. It tells you how short and dangerous our lives as African journos have become in this continent of misery and dictatorship. Persecuted for only telling it as it is! My heart goes out to JC and his family in this time of sorrow and pain. Long live the Free Press.