Two Rwandan journalists with the Umurabyo newspaper have been sentenced to long jail terms after being found guilty of stirring up ethnic divisions.
\nEditor Agnes Nkusi was sentenced to 17 years, while reporter Saidath Mukakibibi was imprisoned for seven.
\nAmong several articles, the judge referred to one saying some Rwandans were unhappy with the country’s rulers.
\nProsecutors said this was “meant to stir [up] hatred and fury against the government”.
\nPresident Paul Kagame came to power in 1994, ending the genocide in which some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered.
\nHe has recently been accused of intolerance and harassing anyone who criticises him.
\nHis government defends its tough media laws, pointing to the role of “hate media” ahead of the genocide.
\nThe newspaper was suspended for six months last year, just ahead of elections which saw Mr Kagame re-elected by a landslide.
\nNkusi was found guilty of disrupting state freedom, propagating ethnic division, genocide revisionism and libel.
\nThe judge cited several offending articles including one which criticised the gacaca traditional community courts set up to deal with 1994 genocide cases and others criticising Rwanda’s reconciliation process.
\nMukakibibi was convicted of disrupting state security.
\nLast month, four former top officials who have fallen out with Mr Kagame and gone into exile were sentenced in absentia to long jail terms for threatening state security and promoting ethnic divisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two Rwandan journalists with the Umurabyo newspaper have been sentenced to long jail terms after being found guilty of stirring up ethnic divisions. Editor Agnes Nkusi was sentenced to 17 years, while reporter Saidath Mukakibibi was imprisoned for seven. Among several articles, the judge referred to one saying some Rwandans were unhappy with the country’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n