Rwandan media professionals are currently safer than before- Kagire

This veteran journalist Fidel Gakire affirmed that Rwandan media professionals are currently safer than before as in the previous years, some officials from both political and security organs mistreated them.

He uttered this during a show aired in the studios of Isango star but rebroadcasted in four other radio stations namely Ishingiro, Inkoramutima, Izuba, and Isangano.

Alongside his fellow journalist Gonzagua Muganwa, Gakire highlighted the importance of easing the work of reporters who normally work in relatively risky circumstances depending on the political situation each nation is undergoing.

Muganwa underlined that this mistreatment victimizing journalists results from the ignorance or/and confusion about the pivotal role that reporters play in national socio-economic and political development.

However, Kagire said that different adequate mechanisms have been set up to help journalists avoid dangerous situations or become aware of the existing laws that can support them in case of injustice.

The invited guests namely Gakire Fidel and Gonzagua Muganwa urged that further legal sanctions would be reinforced to the ones who misuse their power against the journalists.

The journalists, at the other hand, should not present their profession as an excuse to violate the norms and rules that guide the nation.

Highlighting the murder of journalist Jean Léonard Rugambage killed in 2010, invited guests said that the sanctions taken on their behalf were not as satisfying to fellow professionals because they might have been sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Burkina Faso’ turmoil.

The invited guests discussed also about the political turmoil that has characterized the Burkina Faso’ political scene in few past days.

This so-called popular revolution saw the President Blaise Compaoré ousted from the power and took refuge in the neighboring Ivory Coast.

The real and unique insight that the rest of African leaders should learn from this ongoing situation in Burkina Faso is that power is not an endless fortune for them, the guests observed.

For them, an attempt to change the Constitution for any Head of state stay in power is a political miscalculation that is likely to break the nation apart.

Gakire at his side, found that one of the most useful strategies for the ruling Heads of states, is to enable the opposition parties so that the later ones might be fully prepared to rule the nation in case this becomes a priority.

Opposition parties are not the enemies of the nation, rather they are an alternative to rule the nation, he concluded.

This weekly show aims at helping Rwandans to have an insight on what is going  both in  Rwanda and at the international scene

It is prepared and hosted by Association Rwandaise des Journalistes(ARJ) in collaboration with the Institut Panos Paris.

Sponsors are the Netherlands’ Embassy and the European Union.

UM– USEKE.RW