Rwanda seizes newspaper for criticising govt 9/20/2005

Reuters News
KIGALI, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Rwanda has seized an edition of a privately owned newspaper and questioned its editor for publishing articles deemed harmful to the country, police said.

Police spokesman Theo Badege said Umuco's chief editor, Bonaventure Bizumuremyi, was being questioned "because we suspect some bad intention", but he had not been detained.

"We have confiscated the copies because they contain harmful stories that are based on rumours and sensationalism," he said late on Monday.

The Kinyarwanda-language Umuco is one of two privately owned independent weeklies in Rwanda, which has been criticised by the U.S. government for curbing press freedom.

Both Umuco and another weekly, Umuseso, have often run into trouble from the authorities for criticising the government.

Bizumuremyi was questioned at the headquarters of the police criminal investigative department in the capital Kigali for several hours on Sunday after he was intercepted together with the newspapers at a border post en route from Uganda where the weekly is printed, police said.

"He charged that the government of (President Paul) Kagame has achieved nothing and committed more human atrocities than the former government of (Juvenal Habyarimana)," Badege said.

"Besides, in most of the articles he makes serious allegations but does not indicate any source. Everything is from hearsay."

The government of Habyarimana, a Hutu, was in power during a civil war that preceded the 1994 genocide when extremist Hutus massacred an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderates Hutus.

Habyarimana's death in a plane crash in April 1994 helped trigger the bloodletting.

Bizumuremyi is the author of the articles in question. He has twice previously been interrogated by police over another story on alleged corruption within the national police force.

Rwanda has only two printing presses, one of which is owned by the government. The second is owned by the Catholic Church and is used only by the church. Other newspapers have to either use the government press or print their newspapers in Uganda.

A U.S. State Department human rights report on Rwanda for 2004 says the government uses threats, harassment and detention to force journalists not to criticise the government.