Alexandre Niyungeko

I became a journalist in 2002. It was the fulfillment of a childhood dream. I had always wanted to be a journalist. I remember when I was a kid, playing with other children, pretending to be a journalist. I would pretend to present the news, imitating the journalists of the time, whom I knew by heart because I listened to the radio. For me, it was a real honor to speak on the radio! “It's 1 p.m.; Alexandre Niyungeko will present the news”. Can you imagine? I actually think I got my job at RTNB because I had listened to the radio. In October 2002, I believe, RTNB put out a recruitment call. I remember the day we went to take the exam. They needed about ten journalists; we candidates filled eight classrooms, each with a capacity of around fifty people. So, there were over 400 of us. They read us a text twice, then told us, “Write a summary of five to ten lines, and tell us the circumstances under which this text was produced”. It was a text about the Earth Summit in South Africa, which had ended rather disappointingly.* It was a report from RFI that I had listened to that morning. It was a piece of cake! And that's how I got the job. I started in December 2002 in the radio newsroom, and I stayed at RTNB until June 2014.

When I arrived at RTNB, it was still the analog era. We used the Nagra,* with tapes that ran while we recorded. During editing, you needed scissors and tape. To remove a hesitation, for example, we'd cut a piece of a tape, and sometimes the tape would fall to the floor. But after patching the pieces back together, if we heard that we'd cut into a sound, we had to find the piece, which might have fallen, stick it back on, and then listen again and mark with a pen where it needed to be cut… We used a special tape that we could apply and remove. Sometimes, after applying the tape, we'd get to the studio, play the recording, and the tape would come loose; the broadcast would cut out in the middle! These kinds of technical glitches happened regularly, and each time we had to announce: “We apologize, we have a small technical problem, we'll now resume the broadcast…” .

A few months after my arrival, between January 2003 and January 2004, the RTNB underwent a digital transition, facilitated by Jean-François Bastin, a journalist at RTBF (the Belgian Radio and Television of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation), who ran his own non-profit organization called Kabondo. He had been tasked with modernizing RTNB, both in terms of equipment and training. It was within this framework that some of my colleagues and I received on-site training from Belgian journalists at RTBF, including Jean-François Bastin and Françoise Wallemacq. They supported us in production, journalistic writing, and even provided technical assistance for editing on computers.

So I was one of the observers of this transformation at RTNB. It was a complete upheaval: everyone had to learn how to use a computer! There was a certain generation that had never even known a computer, who first had to learn how to use one; then, they had to learn how to edit with it. But even the older staff were able to adapt, because ultimately, with the computer, it was less difficult than with the Nagra. The Nagra weighed about ten kilos; when you had to go out into the field for a report, it wasn't easy, not everyone could run while carrying it! And then, during editing, instead of cutting and pasting pieces of tape, with the computer you only had to click a button, whereas before, you had to search for pieces in the mass of cut tapes that had fallen on the floor… It was crazy, huh!

In 2005, I covered the Arusha negotiations between the Palipehutu-FNL, the last rebel movement at the negotiating table,* and the government of Domitien Ndayizeye, which was nearing the end of its term, as the 2005 elections were approaching.** It was my first time outside Burundi as a reporter. The Palipehutu-FNL was the party of the Hutu people, negotiating with the Hutu government, because Ndayizeye is Hutu. It was a bit strange at the time… I went with a colleague from Bonesha and we were saying to each other, “Oh, so Tutsis are going to cover negotiations between Hutus!”.

It was a very difficult mission, and the negotiations lasted longer than expected. We had gone for three days; Tanzania, which was acting as mediator, was putting pressure on us to end the negotiations with an agreement. But the three days ended without an agreement. And since the negotiations were being held behind closed doors, we had to be on the lookout for the right moment to get some information from someone leaving the room where the parties were meeting… In the end, we spent seven days there, and we left without an agreement.

In 2006, I became involved in union activities. I joined the Burundian Association of Journalists (ABJ), which later became the journalists' union. I participated in the establishment of this union as the association's secretary general. I participated with the support of an American organisation* called Solidarity Center. It's an organisation of American unions that helps unions around the world. They had an office in Nairobi, and there was a process underway to create unions in East African countries where there were no unions yet. For us at the ABJ, it was an opportunity to make our presence known. As a professional association without a union mandate, there were many limitations. There were things the law didn't allow, particularly defending workers in court. That's why we decided to begin the process of transforming the association into a union. During a two-week workshop in Djibouti, Solidarity Center made us aware of the advantages of union status: in addition to defending workers before the law and their employers, ABJ could sign collective agreements and also obtain full membership in the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). Following that workshop, in 2009, the union was founded. The ABJ association became the Burundian Union of Journalists (UBJ), and I became its president.

In 2009, I also joined the East African Journalists Association. Unfortunately, the association's meetings were held in English, and at the time, my English wasn't good enough to follow them. Sometimes, the representative from Djibouti and I—of all the East African countries, only Burundi and Djibouti were French-speaking—requested simultaneous translation, but these services are very expensive, and we didn't always have the resources. So, we decided to make an effort. I enrolled in an English course in Bujumbura, at the William School Academy under the Ministry of East African Community Affairs, and after two years, I received my certificate. It was thanks to this that later, in 2012, I was elected secretary general of the association! There had been elections within the association, and they had decided that a representative from a French-speaking country was needed on the committee.

In 2010, for the first time, the UBJ union participated in the IFJ World Congress held in Cádiz, Spain. This was the first time Burundi was represented as a full member of the IFJ, with voting rights. At this congress, I was elected a reserve member of the IFJ Executive Committee. A reserve member has all the rights of a full member and replaces them at meetings when the full member is unable to attend. I participated in all the IFJ Executive Committee meetings, especially those held in Brussels. Each time, there were full members who were unavailable. And it was at the IFJ Executive Committee in Brussels that I led the campaign for the release of Jean-Claude Kavumbagu, director of the newspaper Net Press, who was imprisoned in Burundi in 2011. At the same time, since I was also a member of the Steering Committee of the African Federation of Journalists (FAJ), I brought the debate to the organization's headquarters in Dakar. Kavumbagu was accused of treason and had been sentenced to life imprisonment. He had written an article in which he offered some criticism of the army's operations. The article may have had some professional flaws, but it didn't warrant a life sentence. It wasn't really a question of balanced reporting; it was more about signalling that the subject shouldn't be covered. The UBJ therefore launched a campaign for his release.

There was also the campaign for the release of Hassan Ruvakuki, a journalist who worked for RFI Kiswahili. He had been arrested in 2011 after being accused of being an accomplice of certain rebels. A colonel in the Burundian army had declared that he was going to launch a rebellion. Ruvakuki had gone to Tanzania to interview him, and upon his return to Burundi, he was arrested and imprisoned on November 28th, 2011. In 2013, the UBJ organized a demonstration for his release. The police attacked us with tear gas to disperse everyone. But we persevered and continued the movement. We demonstrated every Tuesday in Bujumbura. It was a time when the freedom to demonstrate was still possible. We started with a small group, circling the building that houses the Attorney General's office. At first, people were afraid; passersby stared at us and wondered what we were doing. Then the movement grew, people gained courage, and gradually, they joined in. Among the demonstrators were union members as well as outsiders. Meanwhile, civil society had joined us.

That's where I personally started having trouble with the RTNB authorities. I was using the fact that I was involved in union activities—and that's why it's important to have a union. According to the law, a union representative informs their employer of their participation in planned activities; they don't ask for permission. So, when I had a union activity, I informed my superiors: “I have this activity”, and that was it. This greatly upset them: “Why are we keeping this man who attacks the government?”. The entire RTNB management—the director general, the radio director, the television director, the technical director, the administrative and financial director—reported to me what was being said about me: “Be careful, we received an injunction from the president's office...”. I replied: “You can read, it's the law...”. I always carried the Labor Code with me. “There you go. That's my protection; You have no right to stop me”.

My union activities angered the director general of RTNB, who suspended me for a whole month. After the month, I was transferred to television. He said, “He deals with the unions because he has enough time; we'll put him on TV so he won't have time to deal with the unions”. I went there, but I was happy about it: “Thank you, well done; I'd just gained about ten years of experience in radio, now I'm going to have some TV experience too. That's fine for me!”.

So I arrived at the television station, but the editor-in-chief wasn't happy at all because I was a pain in the neck at every meeting. In fact, at the television station, there was no professional debate. The meeting was just to say: “The president is going to this place; the first lady is going to that other place; there's a primary school opening; there's a meeting opening; the minister will be here; the speaker of the Assembly will be there”, and that's how they assigned the workload. I would ask, “Excuse me, gentlemen. Are we in a newsroom or a government department? That's not how it should be done, I'm sorry, that's not what I was taught!”".

There were colleagues who were a little afraid to speak up, who were glad that I came along to give a voice to those who weren't listened to when they expressed a dissenting opinion. But I'd say I didn't change things all that much, because the context we were in wasn't easy. We had the space to discuss, but it all went to waste. They didn't care. Even if we had given a relevant topic and shown how it should be handled, they would say “yes”, they would put it on the rundown of topics to be covered, but they would never assign a team to work on it. It was a context where the television newsroom was called “the party headquarters”. The radio colleagues especially made fun of us: “Oh, the headquarters, how's it going?”. I wasn't the only one complaining, others joined me; but others got discouraged and kept quiet…

At one point, they needed people to present the news on TV. I was perfectly capable of doing it. But there was an order from the President's office: they didn't want me on national television. And so I was transferred again, this time to the news production department. You never see the person who works there. Only the end credits mentioned my name, so you could see that the news producer was Alexandre Niyungeko, and that was it.

Then, in 2013, I approached the radio station director, who was a friend of mine: “I’ve just spent two years in television, and I’d like to return to radio…”. Previously, there was a very popular and interesting radio program called “InfoPlus”. It was a weekly show that aired on weekends, after the weekly news bulletin. They would ask for a topic and analyze it thoroughly. They would interview people. Sometimes they covered a historical topic, sometimes they went international. For example, the Iraq War. They tried to dissect it: What is Iraq? Where is it located? What is its history? Who is Saddam Hussein? Who are the supporters of Saddam Hussein’s regime? What's the problem with the Americans? What's the problem with Iran? And they'd make a 90-minute program out of it. It was a very, very effective program. So, the two producers of the show had just left RTNB, and I explained my request to return to the radio. Instead of staying in the production department, I could have taken over that program. The radio director told the director general of RTNB, who initially hesitated, given that I had been transferred to television and that represented a kind of punishment. Finally, thanks to the radio director's insistence, he agreed. The radio director was an influential person, very close to President Nkurunziza. So, in 2013, I went back to the radio station and resumed hosting the show. But in 2014, I thought, “I can't stay at RTNB any longer. I'm leaving”. I saw that the room for maneuver to practice my profession professionally and freely remained very limited. But I also asked myself, “After all the time I've just spent here arguing with the RTNB administration, why not try to take my experience elsewhere?”. I requested a leave of absence, and I left.

In 2014, I had also just completed a training program at Deutsche Welle (DW) Akademie, a training program for trainers. So I left RTNB with a certificate as a “DW Akademie trainer in Burundi”, trainer of journalists. I thought to myself, “I'm going to dedicate myself to the media”. I had even signed a three-year contract with DW Akademie; they had a project to train correspondents in the provinces. In this project, I conducted on-site training: I would go to the province where the journalist lived, stay with them, meet with them in the morning, discuss the story they wanted to propose, guide them, find an angle, locate sources, and I would provide the vehicle and resources I had so they could go into the field, meet their sources, gather information, record, and, if necessary, edit the footage, even if we hadn't yet reached the editing stage. This was to allow journalists, in the future, to send complete, broadcast-ready information to headquarters in Bujumbura. I would leave for the provinces on Mondays and return on Fridays. During the first year of the project, I trained two RPA correspondents in the provinces, as DW Akademie had established a collaboration with RPA. The work was intended to last three years, with a total of eight correspondents to train, but then the 2015 crisis occurred.

Almost simultaneously, the Press House [= Maison de la Presse] launched a call for applications for the position of Director of the Media Training Center. This was within the framework of the OSCAR project [= “Supported and Strengthened Civil Society Organizations”], a project supporting civil society and the media, funded by the European Union. I had just completed my Master's degree in Journalism at the University of Burundi, in addition to my training with DW Akademie. I submitted my application and was selected. And I became the Director of the Media Training Center. In fact, I signed my contract with DW Akademie while I was already the Center's Director.

I was the center's director until May 23rd, 2015, the day I left Burundi. I was supposed to continue until July 2015, when my one-year contract ended. But at that point, of course, my contract wasn't renewed.

During the 2015 protests, I was also preparing to finish my second term as president of the UBJ union, which was due to end in October 2015. That never happened because I went into exile, and in 2016, the union was suspended in Burundi.

On May 23rd, 2015, I left for Rwanda. I stayed there until 2021, but I was always travelling between Kigali and Brussels, Geneva, or elsewhere. Friends would ask me, “But what are you going back to Kigali for?”. I told them each time that I had never wanted to leave my country, and I always thought I would return. I didn't want to go far, because I thought that by staying in Kigali, I would remain close to my family, close to my country.

When I arrived in Kigali, there were other journalist colleagues who had come before me. Others came after. So, we started to ask ourselves questions. We journalists like to drink, drink, even from morning if you like. Looking at some of them, we wondered, “What's going to become of them? We have to try to figure out how to keep them busy”. So, Bob Rugurika, who was the director of RPA, Patrick Nduwimana, who was the director of Radio Bonesha, Anne Niyuhire, who was the director of Radio Isanganiro, and some Rwandan colleagues I knew, we got together and talked. They always called me “Secretary General”, as I was the Secretary General of the East African Journalists Association. The Rwandans agreed to give us a space to work in, and even a studio. And we started Inzamba.* I arrived in Kigali on May 23rd; on July 10th, not even two months later, the radio station started. It was really fast.

We had almost everything; everyone brought what they had: some a recorder, others a laptop… People were there, there was no shortage of information. People were motivated. But we had no money. Nothing! Even phone credit for calls came out of our own pockets. After a while, it started to get a bit complicated. People were asking, “How are we going to get from our house to the office?”. We needed to find 500 or 1,000 francs for the motorcycle; that came out of our own pockets. We started talking to people, friends, who gave us 70,000, 20,000 Rwandan francs… And then, we got in touch with an organization, International Media Support, to whom we presented what we were doing and the difficulties we were facing. I was the one who wrote to them, in my capacity as director of Inzamba—my colleagues had collectively decided that I should be the director. I asked for our own studio because we wanted to be independent. It took time; we received funding, but we couldn't use it because we didn't have the legal status to buy and import equipment. We had to go through a Rwandan colleague, but there were still difficulties. For about six months, we were without our own studio. Sometimes, we were forced to record the news broadcast in the bathroom or in the car, wherever it was quieter. Alternatively, the Rwandan Journalists' Association lent us a room at the Rwandan Press House. After quite some time, we finally got our own studio. At that point, we started approaching donors. But until then, for almost a year, we had been working as volunteers, without pay, thanks to small donations from friends who came to visit. We received very, very important support from a fellow countrywoman who provided us with food. She sent us bags of rice and fresh vegetables every week. We cooked, and people ate. From there, we had the idea to create a restaurant, which we did when we had the funds. We created the restaurant that we commonly called “Inzamba”. It was open to everyone. People went there; it was very nice, very lively. There were games, a pool table, and there were even pool competitions. Unfortunately, we had to close it because of COVID-19.

In Rwanda, I also continued to advocate for the rights of imprisoned journalists. In October 2015, a technician with RPA, Egide Mwemero, was arrested in eastern DRC on charges of being a rebel. He was imprisoned and taken to a military prison in Kinshasa. Through bribes and maneuvers I won't go into, I managed to visit him in prison. It was a reunion that deeply affected us both. It did him a world of good, and it did his family a world of good too, especially his young wife, whom he had left with a baby, since I was able to take a photo with him and show it to his family. Egide was released a little later. I once again brought his case to the attention of the international media and sought the support of the International Federation of Journalists and other organizations. This is among the things that have made me who I am, things that I consider that I have been able to achieve and that I am proud of.

In 2021, I was forced to leave Rwanda. After the Rwandan authorities told us, “Leave”.* And I came to Belgium. It wasn't that I wanted to. Because if I had wanted to, as I had come to Belgium even in 2015, I would have stayed. I arrived on June 12th, 2021 and a few days later, on June 16th, I went to the Petit-Château** to submit my application for protection. And I began the asylum application process.