It is a year since popular Rwandan poet Innocent Bahati disappeared in suspicious circumstances, prompting over 100 writers, including Margaret Atwood, Ben Okri, and JM Coetzee, to call on Rwandan president Paul Kagame to intervene in the case. Innocent is a page and performance poet, publishing his work on Facebook, on YouTube, as well as giving live performances. In an article on 18 November 2021, Rwandan website Jambonews described him as one of the most popular contemporary poets in Rwanda, thanks to his “endearing personality and humanistic poetry”, going on to say that his writings show concern for the erosion of ethical values in society, which favours material development to the detriment of human development. In one of his last interviews, he is reported as having pleaded for more humanity: “We might perish if we lose our humanity in the pursuit of material wealth.”

Innocent was previously imprisoned for three months in 2017, without being charged of any offence after posting critical comments on Facebook, only being freed after a court order.

He was apparently last seen at a hotel in southern Rwanda, on 7 February 2021, then failed to return to Kigali, and his phones have been switched off since. His disappearance was reported to the Rwanda Investigation Bureau on 9 February last year, with a spokesperson claiming he was not in their custody, but an investigation was “ongoing”.

“We are bringing this matter to your attention, with a plea for urgent action because, one year later, Bahati is still missing and his situation unknown. We note with concern that the Rwandan authorities are yet to disclose any progress or outcome of investigations on his case,” say the authors, led by PEN International president Burhan Sönmez, along with major names, including Paul Auster, Gioconda Belli, Jonathan Franzen, Yann Martel, Elif Shafak and Michael Ondaatje.

They draw attention to a speech in which Rwanda’s secretary of state for culture, Edouard Bamporiki, is reported to have said: “When poetry loses its way, it can mislead the public … I ask you to forget the difficulties that Rwandan poetry community has known in recent times, but rather to do our part to advise and reprimand those amongst who stray from the right path.”

The authors say: “Coming shortly after the disappearance of Bahati in 2021, these chilling remarks by an official of your administration are hardly coincidental. They suggest a pattern of intolerance to free poetic expression by officials, and they legitimately raise suspicions that Bahati may have been disappeared in relation to his poetry. We believe that someone within the Rwandan administration knows about the whereabouts or fate of Bahati … Poetry is not a crime. The world awaits to hear the voice of Innocent Bahati, again.”

Jambonews quotes a stanza from one of Innocent’s popular poems:

 

I am not asking for cows, I am not looking to be rich;

I am not asking for a house, I am a nomad;

O you my benefactor, just help me to survive this day;

God might have a better plan for me tomorrow.

 

PHOTOGRAPH: ANDREA GRIEDER/PEN INTERNATIONAL