Freedom of expression shackled

Gaurav Kanthwal

Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons. Journalists reporting from the dictator-controlled regimes couldn’t agree more with this military wisecrack. 

Despite this, they choose to disagree. For, a journalist is hardwired to question, to dig, to reveal. The nature of a journalist’s job brings him face to face with hazards almost every day. It is in his second nature to ask tough questions, but no one likes to answer tough questions, least of all — dictators.

A reporters’ training programme (2009-2013) run by Anjan Sundaram in Kigali, capital of Rwanda, becomes the fountainhead of stories about rumours, intimidation and oppression journalists faced while reporting in Rwanda under President Paul Kagame’s regime.

More than about the journalists coming under fire in the line of their duty, Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship underlines the paranoia, hostility in the environment that Rwandan people are living in. Freedom of expression, which the rest of the world debates so liberally, is in scarcity in Rwanda. So much so that the innocuous practice of village men sitting in a circle and passing around a flask of banana beer has been outlawed by the Kagame government. The government’s next move, the journalists say in jest, ‘would be to mandate the colour of their socks.’

Meditating over Kagame’s omnipotence, the author observes that the dictator, a former armyman, is all over the state-run media. Newspapers only speak of his benevolence. Radio has virtually become a cue to what people can talk about his governance in public domain. Either it is Kagame or the cattle thieves   paraded on the national television.

All of it gained traction in December last year when it became known that Rwanda has overwhelmingly voted to change the constitution to allow Kagame to potentially rule until 2034. An incredible 98.4 per cent votes went in his favour, leaving just 1.6 per cent of voters opposed — figures even Nelson Mandela’s African National Party (62 per cent) could not attain in 1994 elections in South Africa.

The author writes that his training programme was sanctioned only because it reported on government initiatives and ran a campaign on the significance of washing hands and visiting a doctor regularly. 

During his four-year stay, the author-journalist says that that scribes there just have two options: ‘Fall in line or flee’. How rumours, a journalists’ domain, are turned on against them is startling in its description in the book. To his credit, he keeps his tone critical rather than antagonistic.

Impressive as the book is for its racy narration, the recreation of a dictator’s fear in Rwanda is as convincing. Evoking emotions with his expressive writing style is Sundaram’s forte but a journalist has an added responsibility of going beyond emotions and getting hold of facts. But seeking or digging facts under a dictator’s regime is akin to playing with fire. Thus, Sundaram avoids being reckless.

An award winning journalist who has reported for the New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, The Washington Post and Telegraph, he however, does not have facts to substantiate his claims. Thus, it is a journalists’ diary of events, in which dates are missing, and real-life characters take cover behind pseudonyms.

Sundaram would have connected more with his readers had he provided the historical context of the Rwandan genocide — mass killings of Tutsi and Hutu tribe in 1990s — with the setting up of a dictatorial regime and the famine outbreak in 2006. 

For journalists, this book is a good illustration of how to pepper available information with a crafty use of language and staying out of danger at the same time.