Dissident Spotlight: Jean-Claude Kavumbagu
Considered the first online journalist imprisoned in sub-saharan Africa, Jean-Claude Kavumbagu’s 2010 arrest was a milestone for press freedom in a digital age.
For better and for worse, the Internet removed traditional gatekeepers from reporting. No one had to wait for an editor to approve their story idea or its written details. Citizen journalism became possible on a scale unimaginable before. That openness fed the great hope in ordinary people reporting on their governments and democracy flourishing as a result.
Seems quaint, doesn’t it?
In reality, authoritarian governments arrested journalists and ran smear campaigns against their enemies. The scale was larger, but the tactics were familiar.
Jean-Claude Kavumbagu was one of sub-Saharan Africa’s first victims of this new wave of oppression. A journalist from Burundi, Kavumbagu wrote openly about the “genocidal terrorists” running his country. Along Burundi’s northern border is Rwanda, the site of an attempted genocide of Tutsis perpetrated by the Hutu majority. Hutus also targeted Tutsis in neighboring Burundi.
Kavumbagu believed his long-standing criticism of the Hutus contributed to his arrest, which was ostensibly linked to an article he wrote that was skeptical of the armed forces deployed in Somalia following a terror-inspired bombing.
Burundi’s government charged Kavumbagu with treason for publishing “information that discredits the state and economy.” While he was released nine months later, his arrest was a watershed moment for dissidents in the internet age.
Dictators Use the Internet, Too
One of the frightening things about the internet age is how well authoritarians have adjusted to it. Regimes can use the power of the state to overwhelm social media algorithms and convince entire countries that their dissidents are sold out to state interests.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has brought the Internet of Things to life. Traffic cameras throughout the country use AI to recoginze improperly veiled women, text them citations, and impound their cars.
Every dictatorship has some skill in maintaining power, and they have adapted to the era of big data. But tenacity remains one of the resistance’s best weapons. Kavumbagu has been arrested by at least six different governments in Burundi for speaking out against the flaws he sees in his government.
He’s fighting for the basic freedom to write what he sees in one of the simplest ways: just by exercising it.