New York, June 12, 2007—Rwanda’s Information Minister revoked the publication license of a newspaper without a required court order three days after the paper’s first edition. The Weekly Post, a privately owned, English-language weekly, did not publish this week after Information Minister Laurent Nkusi revoked its authorization, according to a copy of an official letter…
MAY 11, 2007 Posted June 19, 2007 John Williams Ntwali, City Radio CENSORED, IMPRISONED Ntwali, the host of a cultural Kinyarwanda-language bi-weekly program on private City Radio, was arrested on the orders of station’s program director, Alex Rutareka, and later charged with promoting “genocidal ideology” in connection with the broadcast of a Hutu Christian priest’s…
New York, April 20, 2007–A court in the capital, Kigali, today sentenced Agnès Nkusi-Uwimana, director of the bi-monthly journal Umurabyo, to a year in prison on charges linked to the publication of a reader’s letter critical of the government, according to local journalists and press freedom group Journaliste en Danger. Nkusi-Uwimana has been jailed since…
New York, February 12, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the brutal attack on Friday against the editor of a private bi-monthly after the newspaper published articles critical of the government. Editor Jean Bosco Gasasira of the Kinyarwanda-language Umuvugizi remained in intensive care in a hospital in the capital Kigali late today after…
By Joel SimonAs Venezuelan elections approached in November, President Hugo Chávez accused news broadcasters of engaging in a “psychological war to divide, weaken, and destroy the nation.” Their broadcast licenses, he said, could be pulled–no idle threat in a country where a vague 2004 media law allows the government to shut down stations for work…
The Rwandan media continued operating in an atmosphere of pervasive self-censorship periodically reinforced by government repression. In a January 24 speech broadcast on state radio, President Paul Kagame accused Rwandan journalists of unprofessional conduct, including corruption, and suggested that this justified limits on press freedom.
New York, January 16, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the jailing since Friday of the director of a private Kinyarwanda-language newspaper in the capital, Kigali, for publishing a letter critical of the government. Agnès Nkusi-Uwimana of the bi-monthly Umurabyo was still being detained today at the Muhima police station on charges of discrimination and…