Advocacy & Aid

More about Innocent Bahati

Innocent Bahati is a Rwandan poet who, until his disappearance, published his poetry on YouTube and Facebook and regularly performed at poetry events in Rwanda. At the time of his disappearance, he was a teacher at Green Hills Academy in Kigali. His poems include Mfungurira (Open), Rubebe, which he described as a satire about the church, and Uwenda Ngomba u Rwanda (The Debt I Need for Rwanda).

Bahati was last seen on 7 February 2021 at a hotel in Nyanza district, in the Southern Province of Rwanda, where he had reportedly gone to meet someone. When he failed to return to Kigali, people close to him tried to reach him by phone but were unable to do so. After two days of trying to establish his whereabouts, his disappearance was reported to the Rwanda Investigations Bureau (RIB). A spokesperson for the agency denied that it was holding him, stating that investigations were ongoing and that no information would be revealed at the time. PEN International believes that Bahati’s disappearance is directly related to his critical poetry. 

Prior to that, in 2017, he similarly disappeared for several days after posting a critical comment about state authorities on Facebook, before reappearing in police custody. Although he was not charged with an offence, he was detained without trial and released after three months.

PEN International’s statements and campaigns highlighting Bahati’s situation have been followed by remarks from the Rwandan authorities, including claims of an ongoing investigation in 2021, promises to publish its findings soon, and claims attributed to the RIB that Bahati had subsequently left Rwanda to join an armed group in Uganda. PEN International has viewed these responses as part of a pattern of disinformation, denial and silence to evade accountability.

In February 2022, hundreds of writers, artists and poets signed an open letter to President Paul Kagame urging him to intervene in Bahati’s case. In April 2022, PEN Centres reiterated calls for the Rwandan authorities to fully investigate his disappearance and formally publish their findings through conducting a credible, impartial and conclusive investigation.