His Excellency President Paul Kagame

C/o Permanent Representative to UN

Email: rwanda@un.int

21 November 2003 

Your Excellency,

We are writing on behalf of the World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum, which represent 18,000 publications in 100 countries, to express our serious concern at the detention of the publication director of the weekly Umuseso and four of the newspaper’s staff.

According to reports, on 19 November police arrested Robert Sebufilira, publication director of the independent weekly Umuseso, close to the Ugandan border where he was collecting 4,000 copies of his newspaper, which is published in Uganda, where printing costs are cheaper. The newspaper was seized and Mr Sebufilira was transferred to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Kigali.

The next day, Mr Sebufilira’s assistant, McDowell Kalisa, and three other staff members from the newspaper went to the CID to enquire about the publication director’s situation. The four were immediately detained.

Mr Sebufilira and his colleagues were arrested for publishing "false rumours, within the framework of the law that prohibits inciting divisionism and libel". The charges are apparently related to the publication of an article in the most recent issue of Umuseso that reports on the "expected demobilisation" of General-Major Kayumba Nyamwasa. The issue also reportedly contained an article revealing the salaries of top politicians and officials.

The previous director of Umuseso spent a month in jail early this year on charges of "inciting divisionism and discrimination" before being released because of procedural errors. The charges came after the weekly published a caricatural portrait of you and ran an article judged to be "divisionist."  

We are concerned that “inciting divisionism” laws may be used as a pretext to silence those who would seek to legitimately criticise your government. We respectfully remind you that if the jailing of Mr Sebufilira and his colleagues is simply related to their exercise of professional journalism, it would constitute a breach of the right to freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by numerous international conventions. Furthermore, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights considers that ‘detention, as punishment for the peaceful expression of an opinion, is one of the most reprehensible ways to enjoin silence and, as a consequence, a grave violation of human rights’.

We respectfully call on you to do everything possible to ensure that Mr Sebufilira and his colleagues are immediately released and that all charges against them are dropped. We urge you to do everything possible to ensure that in future your country fully respects international standards of freedom of expression.

We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Yours sincerely,

Seok Hyun Hong

President

World Association of Newspapers

Gloria Brown Anderson

President

World Editors