Journalists Sentenced For ‘Undermining State Security’ in Burundi

International onlookers worry that Burundi’s general elections in May, in which Secretary General Evariste Ndayishimiye will run as the presidential candidate for the current ruling party, CNDD-FDD, may be preceded by a media crackdown. (Flickr)

A Burundian court sentenced four journalists—Agnes Ndirubusa, Christine Kamikazi, Egide Harerimana, and Terence Mpozenzi—to two-and-a-half years in prison on January 30 for attempting to undermine state security. The sentencing follows the journalists’ arrest on October 22 while covering a rebel incursion against government forces. The journalists work for Iwacu, one of Burundi’s few remaining independent media outlets. International onlookers fear the potential for a media crackdown ahead of the country’s general elections this May. 

The journalists were arrested in Musigati, a town in northwestern Burundi, where between around 100 Burundian rebels based in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo clashed with Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza’s government forces. At least ten members on each side were reportedly killed. The prosecution called for a 15-year sentence for the journalists, who the government alleges tried to help the rebels. 

Arnaud Froger, the head of Reporters Without Borders’ Africa desk, said, “The conviction of these four reporters is a political punishment with the sole aim of keeping the pressure on independent journalists in the last months before the presidential election. The case was a complete fabrication and the journalists should have been acquitted because they were just doing their job. The sentences are incomprehensible. They should be freed immediately and unconditionally.”

In addition to the sentencing of the four journalists, another Iwacu journalist, Jean Bigirirmana, disappeared after reportedly being abducted by state intelligence services in mid-2016. Burundian authorities never shed light on what happened to Bigirirmana. 

In light of Burundi’s crackdown on independent media, BBC and Voice of America stopped reporting in the country in 2019 after failing to get the authorities to lift orders suspending their activities. Last year, Burundi was ranked 159 of 180 on RSF’s World Press Freedom Index. 

International organizations like RSF fear that media repression in Burundi will intensify with the upcoming May general election. Burundi’s ruling party, the CNDD-FDD, announced in January that Secretary General Evariste Ndayishimiye would be their presidential candidate. The CNDD-FDD is predominantly Hutu ethnically and has been accused of threatening political opponents. Ndayishimiye is a retired army general with close ties to Nkurunziza, both having started out in the CNDD-FDD as government rebels in the 1990s. Ndayishimiye has said that Nkurunziza’s decision to step down and allow for the nomination of a new candidate marks the first time that a Burundian president has peacefully picked their successor. The party has welcomed Nkurunziza’s decision to step down, giving him the title of “Supreme Guide of Patriotism,” a luxury villa, and a lump-sum worth more than $500,000. Meanwhile, according to the UN’s World Food Programme, more than 65 percent of Burundi’s population lives in poverty, and 50 percent is food-insecure. 

Nkurunziza’s decision to step down followed violent protests sparked by his decision to run for a third five-year term in 2015. Following his disputed re-election in July 2015, rebels have embraced urban guerrilla warfare that persists to this day. By May 2016, urban-to-rural trade had been considerably disrupted; an estimated 250,000 Burundians, particularly political activists, had fled the country; and approximately 10 percent of the population was in need of humanitarian assistance. 

Outside organizations like the International Crisis Group (ICG) fear the consolidation and radicalization of the CNDD-FDD’s regime. ICG reports that Nkurunziza’s time in office has had a severe detrimental effect on the constitutional, power-sharing system established by the Arusha Accords of 2000 that ended the civil war between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups in Burundi. The ICG wrote, “This political strategy to dismantle the accord and the return of violent rhetoric and tactics reminiscent of the civil war, have generated great fear within Burundian society.”

International onlookers and journalists continue to worry about the potential consequences of the continued reign of the CNDD-FDD on media freedom, violence against political dissenters, and ethnic cleavages.