Innocent BAHATI

The year ended with poet Innocent Bahati still missing since his disappearance on 7 February 2021 after he reportedly went for a dinner meeting with an unknown  person at a hotel in Nyanza district in the Southern Province of Rwanda. Bahati did not return to the capital, Kigali, as expected. His associates tried to reach him by phone that evening but found it was off. After two days of trying to establish his whereabouts, Bahati’s disappearance was reported to the Rwanda Investigations Bureau (RIB). The RIB spokesperson denied that the agency was holding him, stating that investigations were ongoing, and that no information would be revealed at the time. PEN International believes that his disappearance is in relation to his critical poetry.

In 2017, Bahati had similarly disappeared for several days after he posted a critical comment on Facebook, only to reappear in police custody. Although he was not charged with any offence, he was detained without trial and freed after three months.

PEN International’s  statements and campaigns to highlight Bahati’s situation have often been followed by unsubstantiated remarks from Rwandan authorities, mostly reported by government affiliated news outlets. These have included claims of an ongoing investigation and promises to publish a full report ‘soon’ as well as claims attributed to the Rwanda Investigations Bureau (RIB) that Bahati had left Rwanda to join an armed group in Uganda. PEN International believes that these responses are typical of Rwanda’s frequent use of disinformation, denial, and silence to avoid accountability. To keep a spotlight on Bahati’s case, he was featured as one of the Empty Chairs at the 90th Congress of PEN International held in September 2024 in Oxford, UK.

Innocent Bahati (age 32 years) published his poetry on YouTube and Facebook and regularly performed at poetry events in Rwanda. His poems include ‘Mfungurira’ (Open) ‘Rubebe’, which Bahati described as a satire about the church in a newspaper article; and ‘Uwenda Ngomba u Rwanda’ (The Debt I Need for Rwanda), among others.