By Anjan Sundaram
Published 2016
My review
I found the book jumped about a lot and did start to wonder how factual it was. I have discovered a few reviews and web information that casts some doubts but there is plenty of suggestions out there in various newspapers that all is not as it seems in Rwanda. One also can't be certain of bona fides of the reviews that suggest it is all fiction and lies.
However I think some references could have been included to assist, for example where it was stated that the Millennium Challenge Corporation funds were forfeited. It would have reduced that feeling of uncertainty.
I did some searching on the internet and that did provide some indications that the country was not free and the press were heavily constricted.
Rating 2/5
Telagraph UK
By Richard Grant 22 Jul 2010
Twagiramungu persevered, even after two of his most prominent supporters disappeared without trace, and Kagame won 95 per cent of the vote.
The government has closed down two critical newspapers, and arrested a journalist for defamation (he compared Kagame with Hitler) and divisionism. A dissident general has survived an assassination attempt in South Africa, and a newspaper editor who linked it to the Rwandan government was murdered in Kigali. Two opposition parties have been prevented from registering, and the vice-president of one, Andre Kagwa Rwisereka of the Democratic Greens, has turned up dead from machete wounds. Political rallies have been been broken up violently by the police, and two Hutu opposition candidates have been arrested, one for divisionism, the other, Victoire Ingabire, for the Orwellian crime of 'genocide ideology’.
Is Kagame a benevolent dictator, the strong hand needed to pull Rwanda forward into a better future, or is he an incurable despot? If you hold him up to the light in the right way, you can see both facets glinting at once.
Washington Post
By Lara Santoro January 24, 2014
But as human rights organizations keep noting, the survival rate among Rwanda’s dissidents is not h'igh .
Human Rights Watch
And certainly the Human Rights Watch report that in 2015 "tight restrictions on freedom of speech and political space remained in place"
Book Publicity
Hearing a blast, journalist Anjan Sundaram headed uphill towards the sound. Grenade explosions are not entirely unusual in the city of Kigali; dissidents throw them in public areas to try and destabilise the government and, since moving to Rwanda, he had observed an increasing number of them.
What was unusual about this one, however, was that when Sundaram arrived, it was as though nothing had happened. Traffic circulated as normal, there was no debris on the streets and the policeman on duty denied any event whatsoever. This was evidence of a clean-up, a cloaking of the discontent in Rwanda and a desire to silence the media in a country most of whose citizens were without internet. This was the first of many ominous events.
Bad News is the extraordinary account of the battle for free speech in modern-day Rwanda. Following not only those journalists who stayed, despite fearing torture or even death from a ruthless government, but also those reporting from exile, it is the story of papers being shut down, of lies told to please foreign delegates, of the unshakeable loyalty that can be bred by terror, of history being retold, of constant surveillance, of corrupted elections and of great courage.
It tells the true narrative of Rwandan society today and, in the face of powerful forces, of the fight to make explosions heard.
