Gitega : a radio Isanganiro correspondent arrested, then released

On Sunday, journalist Gérard Nibigira from radio Isanganiro was looking for fuel for his car but also for information regarding the fuel shortage in Gitega (political capital). He was then arrested by the police around 12:30 p.m. at one of the city’s petrol stations. But the police did not just arrest him since they also mishandled him, at the injunction and with the help of Jean Prime Ndikubwayo, the district police commissioner in Gitega.

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Gérard Nibigira was then taken to the dungeons of the provincial police station in Gitega where he spent an hour.

The journalist was released around 1:30 p.m.

According to the Gitega police, journalist Nibigira was accused of taking videos and photos of the police trying to restore order in that petrol station.

According to Gérard Nibigira, he had already given 30,000 francs upon entering the dungeon for “his participation in the purchase of the candle”, a sum demanded from each new arrival.

His money was returned to him but he deplores the fact that “my two cell phones remain confiscated and are still in the hands of the district police commissioner in Gitega.”

These acts, which Gérard Nibigira describes as intimidation, are becoming more and more frequent in the country. On May 23, the correspondent of the Iwacu press group in Gitega, Jean Noël Manirakiza, was brutalized and his work tools seized by the provincial police commissioner in Gitega, police colonel Évariste Habogorimana. Ten days later, on June 4, his colleague, Pascal Ntakirutimana, head of the political desk of the newspaper Iwacu, narrowly escaped a kidnapping attempt in the Cibitoke zone in the commercial city Bujumbura.

And at the start of the week, the headquarters of the Iwacu press group was targeted by stone throwing. Burundian authorities have not denounced any of these acts.

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Gérard Nibigira, the correspondent of radio Isanganiro in Gitega, DR