{"id":85643,"date":"2021-12-16T18:12:23","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T17:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/?p=85643"},"modified":"2021-12-16T18:20:53","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T17:20:53","slug":"a-good-man-and-an-exceptional-colleague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/85643-a-good-man-and-an-exceptional-colleague.html","title":{"rendered":"\u201cA good man and an exceptional colleague\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We have received many testimonies following the death on November 30 of Ephrem Rugiririza, Justice Info\u2019s Africa editor. Former colleagues and others who knew him during his 30-year career speak of an exceptional journalist and human being. Ephrem was a man who lived through the greatest tragedy of the late 20th century, the genocide in Rwanda, without losing his clarity of vision, humanism or ability to see the complexity of history, and without giving up his passion for journalism. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\"In life, you always have that one person whose path was different, with whom you were not even close friends in the true sense of the word, but who, along the way, gives you another perspective on things. And that changes you. For me it was Ephrem Rugiririza, whom I had listened to since childhood on the French-language news [on Radio Rwanda] and whom I met in Arusha [headquarters of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ICTR] in 2010 for training on judicial reporting organized by Fondation Hirondelle. Since then, I've become interested in it for good,\" says Fulgence Niyonagize, currently a journalist at Pax Press. \"I remember the way he spoke slowly but every word carried weight, and those moments of sharing in Arusha, with Ephrem making sure that I learn [and] that I return safely after the training. Oh yes, I remember that! And now, the unexpected moment has come, and he is gone, our Ephrem. Absent from this world but always present in my memory.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born on January 5, 1964, Ephrem joined Radio Rwanda in 1991, at the same time as Justice Info\u2019s Rwanda correspondent Emmanuel Sehene Ruvugiro, who paid him a powerful personal tribute<\/a> on December 3, the day Ephrem\u2019s body was returned to the land of his forefathers. At the beginning of the 1990s, Rwanda was already plunged into civil war and at the same time undergoing democratization, while extremists of what was soon to be called \"Hutu Power\" were mobilizing. This was a movement of people who wanted to exterminate the Tutsis, a plan they would carry out three years later. There are probably only a handful of Rwandan journalists who experienced this terrible period without being killed, without becoming a killer, and without ever abandoning their profession. This was Ephrem Rugiririza\u2019s exceptional story -- that of an outstanding journalist caught up in an unprecedented national cataclysm who never lost his moral compass, his rigour and independence, nor his dedication to his profession. It was a tour de force for this son of a Hutu farmer from northern Rwanda who had become passionate about information as well as languages -- Kinyarwanda, Swahili and French.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cL<\/strong>ike good music\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\"If today I speak good French, it is because he contributed greatly to it, he who was a true scientist and couldn\u2019t help laughing at his literary professional career. He was a genius!\" says Solange Ayanone, who first met him at Ruhengeri secondary school where Ephrem taught French. \"In class, no one wanted to miss his lessons: we were happy to see such an energetic, passionate teacher who loved French and made us love it ourselves.\" Solange recalls the \"indelible mark\" left by \"his knowledge and his human qualities\".<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ephrem later welcomed Solange to the French section of Radio Rwanda. \"When I was teaching you, you didn't know that French was going to be so useful,\" he told her. \"He supported me throughout the beginning of my career as a journalist, happy to take his former pupil in hand! When he presented the news, it was not so much the content that interested me, but his art of presenting. It was always a lively edition in which he put all his energy and art, like good music. It was this man, she says, who \"contributed a lot to who I am today\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCalm, lucid and hard-working\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Khassim Yussuf joined Radio Rwanda at the same time as Ephrem. After working with him at the Rwandan Information Office (Orinfor), Ephrem was his supervisor at Agence France Presse in Kigali. He speaks of \"a man with a big heart, always listening to others, very magnanimous\". Journalist Barore Cleophas worked with Ephrem in the aftermath of the genocide. \"I recognized in him a calm, lucid, helpful and hardworking man. He did not like to hustle people but could tolerate all temperaments. At first seemingly quite introverted, he was more open than we thought, but generally calm,\u201d says Kennedy Ndahiro who was his colleague at the Hirondelle News Agency, where they covered the ICTR trials in Tanzania. Ephrem was a key journalist there for more than a decade, starting in 2003. Now executive director of The New Times newspaper in Rwanda, Kennedy remembers \"a very studious man, very supportive, very humble but very smart. He had an alert mind and liked to do research. We have lost a good man and an outstanding professional.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What could have been more sensitive, more delicate, than covering these genocide trials with rigour, clarity of vision and open-mindedness? In 2015, Hirondelle News Agency closed as the ICTR closed its hearings in Arusha, but Ephrem immediately joined Justice Info, a website created by the same Fondation Hirondelle to cover transitional justice around the world. Ephrem had become the most experienced and sharpest African journalist in this field. He was the Africa hub of this news site. And he continued to train journalists across the continent to cover these difficult and terribly human cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere in the east do you live? Gom<\/strong>a, Rutshuru, Butembo?\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Among them is Claude Sengenya, a young reporter based in Butembo, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a region scarred by armed groups and epidemics. \"No sooner had I submitted my three proposals [for articles] than I received the reaction of a man who struck me with his knowledge of my area: 'Nice to meet you. Where do you live in the East? Goma, Rutshuru, Butembo?', Ephrem Rugiririza asked me. I was reassured that I was working with an experienced journalist who had a good grasp of my volatile Kivu region. When I reported on the hope raised by military justice in dealing with mass crimes in the Congo, on the link between war and environmental crimes in Kivu, on the difficult search for justice and truth by specialized tribunals in the Central African Republic or in Gambia, Ephrem had this well-informed eye that allowed him to look at the facts in all their facets, to cross-check them with sources in his rich address book. Sometimes Ephrem would give me an interesting source who lived in my region without my knowledge! This knowledge coupled with rigour led Ephrem to push me further for the smallest details to make the transitional justice process in my country understandable. I was convinced that Ephrem held a truth about the crimes of the Great Lakes, a truth that we read in his articles. Ephrem's death means loss of a witness to the truth, because in the course of his work as a journalist, Ephrem listened to and reconstructed the testimonies of victims, witnesses and executioners. Ephrem's death is also the loss of a key to the truth, especially about the crimes in the Great Lakes region of Africa. We have lost a pillar, a man of rigour, available to teach us young people in our careers. I would have liked to see him read this message in which I say to him in Kiswahili, which we sometimes liked to speak to each other: shukrani Mzee Ephrem kwa mema yote uliyo tu tendeya - thank you, dear Ephrem, for all the blessings \u2013 and he would reply to me, as in one of his first e-mails, aksanti mdogo wangu - thank you, my young brother.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Very saddened to learn of the death of Ephrem Rugiririza, a colleague and Africa editor at @justiceinfonet<\/a>.

His 20 years covering transitional justice in Rwanda were evident in his pointed, nuanced, complex writing, like here https:\/\/t.co\/fGsqPA76Fr<\/a>https:\/\/t.co\/UXw3oJBdyM<\/a><\/p>— Andr\u00e9s Berm\u00fadez Li\u00e9vano (@bermudezlievano) December 3, 2021<\/a><\/blockquote>