Anjan Sundaram’s new book, Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship, takes aim at the vaunted position Rwanda enjoys in the western imagination. Far from being a success story of post-conflict peacebuilding since the 1994 genocide, Sundaram’s Rwanda exists in an authoritarian bubble characterized by fear and repression. Over the course of nearly five years living in the country, Sundaram witnessed the steady dismantling of Rwanda’s press corps and the stifling of free speech more broadly. In order to survive, some of Sundaram’s students, colleagues and friends reinvented themselves as regime propagandists, while others went into hiding or fled the country entirely. By silencing and co-opting the press, Sundaram argues, the government has largely succeeded in destroying the possibilities for independent journalism in Rwanda. I recently spoke with Sundaram about Bad News, the nature of political repression in Rwanda, and his experience working with journalists in a place where even mild criticism of the government can cost one their life.
What brought you to Rwanda? Did you know what you were getting yourself into when you decided to relocate there?
I went to Rwanda in 2009. At the time, I was looking for a quiet place to write my first book, Stringer about the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rwanda seemed like a quiet, calm country; peaceful, maybe even a little bit boring. Rwanda also happens to share a border with Congo, and so I thought that in the event that I needed some inspiration while writing Stringer I could jump across the border. What I knew about Rwanda was what you’ll continue to find in the press today – that it is a harmonious country that is recovering from the genocide and making great progress.
But I was also offered a job teaching and working with Rwandan journalists in a program funded by the European Union and the United Kingdom. I thought that this would be a great way to engage with society, working alongside my journalist colleagues in the country. What I quickly realized was that they were operating in an incredibly repressive environment. One journalist told me about how he had been beaten into a coma after he brought up the issue of press harassment in front of President Paul Kagame at a press conference. Another student, who was sick with HIV, told me about how during imprisonment she was dragged from room to room, not allowed to sleep, driven to exhaustion, and how her child was effectively orphaned during this time. These journalists were special. They were some of the last independent journalists left in the country. FULL STORY