Twitter profile photo of journalist John Williams Ntwali.
A prominent Rwandan journalist, critic of President Paul Kagame’s regime, died in a traffic accident on Wednesday, January 18, his newspaper, the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), said on Friday, citing “suspicious circumstances”.
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John Williams Ntwali, 44, editor of The Chronicles newspaper, was killed on Wednesday when a vehicle struck the motorcycle he was riding as a passenger. “Ntwali died in an accident at 2:50 am on January 18 in Kimihurura, a town near Kigali, The Chronicles wrote on Twitter: “Ntwali was the passenger on the motorcycle. He was killed instantly. The driver of the vehicle was arrested and taken into custody, police said to local media.
John Williams Ntwali was often “the only journalist who dared to report on political persecution and oppression. He joins a long list of people who have defied the government and died under suspicious circumstances,” wrote Lewis Mudge, HRW’s director for Central Africa, in a statement. “There are many reasons to support the theory of a car accident in question, and it is imperative that there be a prompt and effective investigation, drawing on international expertise, to determine whether or not he was murdered. »
Different voices
“Ntwali”, as many called him, was behind bars several times in the course of his career – sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for several weeks. He had also founded the Pax TV channel on YouTube, which mainly broadcast interviews with dissidents in the Kinyarwanda language.
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Paul Kagame has ruled Rwanda with an iron fist since the end of the 1994 genocide that killed at least 800,000 mostly Tutsis. The president, praised for the success of his development policy, has also been criticized by human rights groups for his crackdown on freedom of expression. The country is ranked 136th out of 180 countries for press freedom by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). “Since 1996, eight professionals have been killed or are missing and 35 have been forced into exile,” writes RSF in particular on its website. In the last decade, independent media has become scarce, blocked by the government.
Anjan Sundaram, who lives in Rwanda and has written in the media about the country’s shrinking space for freedom, said “Ntwali” was a target. “He was on a blacklist of Rwandan journalists critical of the government,” he said on Twitter.