19 June 2022
Rwanda: Being a sports reporter sounds like a rather safe job option. But Prudence Nsengumukiza, who had been working for a pro-government media firm, recently fled his home country because “the constant fear of displeasing someone in power became too much”. For example, three years ago, army-owned football club APR FC sacked 16 players over poor performance. When Nsengumukiza wanted to investigate, his editors would not let him “arguing it would not be well received”. Since “to put Rwanda in disrepute with its development partners” is not appreciated, even gets you into danger, Nsengumukiza, who now in Belgium works for a diaspora-run website critical of the Rwandan government has been accused by a government-linked website of “cowardice” and, worse, “making a living by tarnishing the country that gave you milk”. By the same site, he was warned that “it is also a betrayal and nobody betrays Rwanda and gets lucky”. Other critics of the government have been imprisoned, e.g., Dieudonné Niyonsenga (7 years) while Eleneus Akanga, like Nsengumukiza, managed to flee abroad. The book “Bad News” of Anjan Sundaram lists around 60 journalists who “were physically assaulted, arrested, killed or forced to flee after criticising Rwanda's government between 1995 and 2014.” BBC Kinyarwanda has been taken off air in 2014 and remains so because BBC Two had dared challenge the government representation of the genocide. The Commonwealth’s accepting Rwanda as a member in 2009 despite its knowing of human rights violations has been criticized. Now, “(a)head of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm), 24 international civil society groups wrote an open letter warning that the Commonwealth's silence on Rwanda's human rights record risked undermining the organisation's human rights mandate.” No comment has been made by the Commonwealth on this nor an answer given to the BBC’s question why the Chogm was decided to be held in Kigali.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61631438
18 June 2022
Africa’s youth: 90% if not all want out. If that may be true only for the well-educated young in Nigeria, the overall situation is alarming, as the recently published South African Ichikowitz Family Foundation’s “African Youth Survey 2022” found, surveying 4,500 young people in 15 African countries. 95% in Nigeria and 89% in Zambia – the two worst amongst the 15 countries – think their country is heading in the wrong direction. Even in the two best, only 60% in Rwanda and 56% in Ghana think it is going in the right direction.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61795026
Tunisia: Seifeddine Makhlouf, head of the conservative Karama party (allied to the Islamist Ennadha party) and one of the fiercest critics of President Kaïs Saïed, has been sentenced to one year in prison and was banned from practising law for five years because he had insulted a judge. A judiciary at the orders of the President?
BBC Africa Latest Updates 18 June 2022. 8:13