Bujumbura : where is Jean Bigirimana? The Iwacu press group still asks this question that has remained unanswered since 2016

The Iwacu press group organized a humble but certainly very significant event. On Tuesday, its employees remembered Jean Bigirimana, our colleague who disappeared on July 22, 2016. The director of publications at Iwacu, Léandre Sikuyavuga, asked this question that will always be raised as long as it has no answer : “where is Jean Bigirimana?”

INFO SOS Médias Burundi

Eight years after his forced disappearance, journalists of the Iwacu press group remembered their colleague Jean Bigirimana. They gathered in the inner courtyard, in front of his portrait, to honor his memory on Tuesday morning. They laid a wreath of flowers there. Léandre Sikuyavuga, Director of Publications at Iwacu, spoke about the day of our colleague’s disappearance.

“It was Friday, July 22, 2016 in the afternoon when I received this terrible phone call informing me that our colleague had been arrested in Bugarama (Muramvya province – central Burundi). For several days, we did everything we could to find out who arrested Jean Bigirimana. The pain is still the same,” he described.

Two journalists from the Iwacu press group lay a wreath of flowers in front of the portrait of Jean Bigirimana, July 23, 2024 in Bujumbura (SOS Médias Burundi)

The question that persists

For Léandre Sikuyavuga “the questions we asked eight years ago are still the same, we are asking them again, we will ask them again tomorrow until we get an answer.”

“Where is Jean Bigirimana? Who kidnapped our colleague? What crime did he commit? Jean was a son, a brother, a husband, a father. Jean was a Burundian citizen like others. Jean did not commit any crime and did not face any trial,” said Léandre Sikuyavuga in the Iwacu press release.

And he clarified : “And even if he had committed a fault, Jean Bigirimana should have had the right to justice.”

Trauma

According to the director of publications at Iwacu, the disappearance of Jean Bigirimana “is a trauma for all of us.”

“Jean was a journalist. His disappearance is an ordeal, a trauma for all of us. But since that terrible date, with fear in our stomachs, we have not given up. We have continued our work,” he noted during an event in which the local press did not participate in its entirety.

The Iwacu press group says it will never stop demanding justice for Jean Bigirimana, whose family is currently in exile.

————–

Employees of the Iwacu press group gathered in the courtyard in front of the portrait of Jean Bigirimana, July 23, 2024 in Bujumbura (SOS Médias Burundi)