By David Himbara
Rwandan poet Innocent Bahati went missing on February 7, 2021, and remains unaccounted for. BBC Gahuza was one of the news outlets which reported that the 26-year-old poet disappeared without a trace on the evening of February 7, 2021. Bahati’s roommate, fellow poet Junior Rumaga, confirmed that Bahati attended dinner with an associate at a hotel in Nyanza District, in Rwanda’s Southern Province and did not return home to Kigali after the meeting. During the evening of February 7, Bahati’s phone turned off and his roommate was unable to reach him.
Bahati is a nationally recognized poet and technology instructor at Green Hills Academy in Kigali, Rwanda. The Academy is owned by General Paul Kagame’s wife, Madam Jeanette Kagame Nyiramongi. Bahati writes poetry about political issues such as repression and poverty – some of the topics that only the most courageous people dare discuss in Kagame’s Rwanda.
This is terrible. Bahati may have been killed – one year after we lost Kizito Mihigo, another brilliant artist who was murdered in police custody on February 17, 2020. Kagame is finishing our young people, especially our bright artists. Lord save Rwanda. We pray that somehow Bahati is still alive.
Listen to two of Bahati’s poems published on his YouTube channel below:
