Popular Comedian Arrested For His Joke on President

Comedian Alfred Aubi Mugenzi 'Kigingi'

A popular Burundi comedian and Buja FM radio host, Alfred Aubin Mugenzi, aka “Kigingi” was arrested this week for poking fun at the President, his family said Friday.

He was apprehended at a hotel in Muramvya while on a promotional tour for a beer company on Tuesday by Burundi’s National Intelligence Service (known by its French acronym, SNR) and charged
with insulting President Pierre Nkurunziza.

“He was transferred to Bujumbura and is being held in the SNR dungeons, but no one has been allowed to see him”, said a concerned relative, who did not want to be named for fear of repercussions. The relative said Mugenzi’s family fears the funny man may suffer the same fate as others taken by the SNR, who rights groups say are commonly tortured or simply disappeared. Many are reported to have died in jail.

SNR officers told the relative that Mugenzi was arrested “for contempt of the head of state” after a skit he performed in neighbouring Rwanda last year, in which he lampooned football-mad third-term Nkurunziza, showing him refusing to leave the pitch despite receiving two yellow cards.

Nkurunziza’s refusal to stand down after two terms and instead run for a controversial third mandate in 2015 triggered bloody unrest, a failed military coup and months of violence that has killed hundreds of people and driven a quarter of a million to flee the country.

Nkurunziza, a former sports teacher, is the player-owner of Hallelujah FC, where he is frequently the top scorer.


Source: AFP