Friday, March 30, 2007

The SIUC Chapter of the National Association of Blank Journalists is pleased to Host Visiting Rwandan journalist Steven Baguma on Thursday April 12 at 4 p.m. in the Dean’s Conference Room (Room 1032 across from McLeod theater in the Communications Building)

His program should be very interesting attend all are welcome.

Since 2003, Steven Baguma, 28, has been writing for the English-language daily The New Times where he covered the political desk and acted as sub-editor for the supplements section. In October of 2006, he became The New Times' bureau chief in Cyangugu, a town on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Baguma developed a passion for journalism while studying at the National University of Rwanda's School of Journalism and Communication where he became a contributor andsub-editor for The New Butarean, the school's weekly newsletter from 2000 to 2002.

Currently he is participating in an Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship and is assigned to the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

A civil war in 1990 along with several political and economic upheavals, exacerbated ethnic tensions, culminating in April 1994 in the genocide of roughly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

The Tutsi rebels defeated the Hutu regime and ended the killing in July 1994, but approximately 2 million Hutu refugees - many fearing Tutsi retribution fled Since then, most have returned to Rwanda.

Despite substantial international assistance and political reforms - including Rwanda's first local elections in March 1999 and its first post-genocide presidential and legislative elections in August and September 2003 - the country continues to struggle to boost investment and agricultural output, and ethnic reconciliation is complicated by the real and perceived Tutsi political dominance.

Kigali's increasing centralization and intolerance of dissent, the nagging Hutu extremist insurgency across the border, and Rwandan involvement in two wars in recent years in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo continue to hinder Rwanda's efforts to escape its bloody legacy.