Rwanda Arrests Second Journalist From the Umurabyo Newspaper

July 13 (Bloomberg) -- A second Rwandan journalist working for the Umurabyo newspaper has been arrested under laws aimed at reducing tensions between the Central African country’s Tutsi and Hutu tribes.

Saidati Mukakibibi, a reporter, was charged with “divisionism and for likening President Paul Kagame to Hitler,” police spokesman Eric Kayiranga said today in a phone interview from the capital, Kigali. She worked for the newspaper without being registered as a journalist, the spokesman said.

Under Rwandan law, it is an offense to denigrate the president, deny the 1994 genocide of the minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus by ethnic-Hutu militias, or to create “divisionism” between the tribes. Rwanda also requires journalists to be registered with the Media High Commission, which is controlled by Kagame’s Rwanda Patriotic Front party.

Umurabyo published a picture of Kagame superimposed on a Nazi swastika, Kayiranga said. Umurabyo editor Agnes Uwimana was arrested July 9 and may face 30 years in prison if found guilty of genocide denial, the state-owned Rwanda News Agency has said. The government describes Umurabyo as an opposition newspaper.

Opposition figures in Rwanda have said a number of recent arrests in Kigali, and the defection of a senior general to South Africa, are connected to presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for next month. Kagame has denied the accusations, and Kayiranga said the arrests of the two Umurabyo journalists aren’t “in any way” connected to the elections.

Jean-Leonard Rugambage, a journalist for the banned Umuvugizi newspaper, was killed by an unidentified gunman June 25. Umuvugizi, a tabloid published in the local Kinyarwanda language, was banned over allegations it printed lies in April.

As many as 800,000 people, more than a 10th of Rwanda’s population, died in a 100-day slaughter of minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus by ethnic-Hutu militias in 1994. The massacre began after the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana, whose plane was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali on April 6 of that year.

--Editors: Heather Langan, Digby Lidstone

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Latham in Durban at blatham@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin in Johannesburg at asguazzin@bloomberg.net.