Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, an internation media activist organisation, has released its annual report on the state of media tolerance around the world. In what will disappoint the Bashers in Uganda, President Museveni and the NRM are not named among the 'media predators' of Africa. Instead, it is Rwanda's Paul Kagame, who is used every time the Bashers want to stick one at Sevo, who is named among the eight predators in Africa. This ironic blue-eyed boy of the local Ugandan media shares his spot with the likes of Al Shabab.
Political tension is rising in Rwanda ahead of elections due in August and investigative journalist Robert Mukomboz was thrown out of the country for criticising President Paul Kagame.
"The president's office would try to dictate what I'm supposed to write, would even want to dictate the headlines, and would go to the extent of trying to draft the story for me and include my by-line," he told the BBC's World Today programme.Our Bashers, who are all over Sevo on social network media, would have loved to have him on that list because it would have been more arsenal in their armoury for the public relations war. One Basher, His Highness the Agha Khan's newspaper, The Daily Monitor must have printed the story below with heavy hearts because they have continually launched a vicious assault on the man who helped get the owner's properties in Uganda back. (But true to their form, they couldn't resist taking a kick at Uganda while the report dragged them out of the ring).
The report comes after human rights observers and analysts expressed fear that Uganda is increasingly degenerating to the class of Rwanda even after making some gains in legislating media friendly laws such as the Access to Information Act and the Whistle Blowers Act.
These gains, the group says, are, however, being eroded by other proposed media unfriendly laws like the ones on the Press and Journalists Act (1995) into what the civil society, international body of journalists, human right activists and industry experts describe as draconian law. The report indicates that in Rwanda, Mr Kagame does not tolerate embarrassing questions at news conferences, often denigrates journalists and brands outspoken media as "Radio Mille Collines."
"Every year several Rwandan journalists decide to go into exile because they find the atmosphere unbearable in their home country. This does not worry President Kagame, who refers to journalists as "mercenaries" and "bums"," reads part of the report. However, the Rwanda government says the media needs to be controlled to ensure it does not incite or promote genocide as it did in 1994.
