By Felicien Mwumvaneza
Umuvugizi is a Rwandan satiric news source. It is a Kinyarwanda bi-monthly newspaper and instant publishing website in both Kinyarwanda and English featuring satirical and sensational articles almost exclusively on political issues and events in Rwanda. Umuvugizi started as a highly critical newspaper but became increasingly erratic and satirical against the Rwandan government, its leadership and the president.
Together with its sister newspaper, Umuseso, the main focus of their articles was that there was going to be another genocide soon, that Rwanda was undermining the security of its neighbours, that military coups in the country were eminent and so on. It was temporarily suspended in 2010 by the Rwandan Media High Council for "inciting public disorder" and defamation in breach of the media law, and its editor was sentenced to 2 and a half years in prison by the Supreme Court on the same charges.
Since last year (2010) Umuvugizi publishes its satirical articles mostly on its website and its English page started in June 2011. Umuvugizi articles mix both fictional, imagined and real events in and about Rwanda or any world news and information and uses them to justify its claims about leadership failure in the country, conspiracies about leadership corruption, murders and attempted murders by the country's political and military leadership, calls for civil war to change the elected government, instilling fear among its readers by encouraging and mobilising Rwandans to flee the country, dissuading Rwandan refugees from returning to their country especially those who live in Europe, the USA and East and Central Africa. That is just some of what the hate news source covers generally in its reporting.
In order to feign authenticity, it prefaces all its articles as information from "credible sources". It has recently started to post fictional and impersonated audio recordings on its website claiming assassination attempts by the government against its opponents and tries to link any news of illness of political or military officials to poisoning by intelligence agencies. It claims that it sources the audio records and other stories from anonymous Rwandan "intelligence agents" and other sources it always does not name "for security reasons." It fakes authenticity by statements like "our repeated attempts to contact the concerned officials were futile." None of those attempts to verify their claims has ever been indicated to have been successful.
Umuvugizi articles capitalise on "analysis" - explaining and predicting news and events in Rwanda and never revisits its false claims when the events it tries to link to each other later prove untrue as is always the case. The reach of its current readership is not known, but the news source is ALWAYS critical of the Rwandan government and ALWAYS promotes the views and agenda of foreign and local critics, opposition groups and individuals against Rwanda, and most especially its leadership and politics.
It is also not known if its Rwandan and foreign readership are aware of its highly satirical nature which is saturated with overt elements of rogue political mobilisation, lingering and mostly overt hatred.
This kind of media games is not healthy especially for a country that has a history of genocide, but then again the false claims and hate campaign of news sources such as Umuvugizi are so unreasonably plain for even the most unsuspecting reader to notice. Unfortunately for such journalists and individuals, Rwanda's history of conflict and genocide and the current story of amazing reconstruction and social and economic progress are hard facts to twist without "risking" becoming a good citizen again.
