Kigali Grenades: News Redux

If you do a Google News search for ‘kigali grenades,’ you’ll get nearly 1500 items right now.  That includes a lot of bullshit, so here are the high points, which is to say, most of the real news stories.  I suspect it’s most because I found them all on the first page of the Google results, before a bunch of aggregated half-links and the ongoing reporting about the election.

Update:

BBC Focus on Africa is smart enough to employ some of the savviest local journalists I’ve ever met.  I can’t get the bandwidth to listen a bit to the programs and tell you which is which, so go to the Focus on Africa page and check out several Rwanda stories.

It’s nearly noon in Kigali the day after the grenade.  I’m not going to keep adding news stories as they come; the information will sort itself out.  Last night it was hard to find and corroborate, so this list was helpful.  One thing that is worth pointing out, though, is Kigaliwire’s mapping of grenades since February.  I can’t get it to load in Rwanda (the irony!) but it sounds like a good idea.  (Also recommended, Rapha’s blog, if you can read German.  Good for info, critical perspective on American press on grenades.  h/t kigaliwire.)

• Events of the day variously reported as grenades, bombs, gunfire.  Only grenades appear confirmed in major news sources.  Two, possibly three, grenades.  (Why “possibly three”: Monitor (see below) says one at “an international bus station.”  I don’t know what exactly that means — the one to Kampala?  Bujumbura? — and I didn’t see it in other reports, at least at this hour.)
• AP has this eyewitness report:  “I saw a grenade (rolling) past and then I felt myself falling down,” Michael Mugisha, a student who had blood on his shirt and a bandage under his right eye, said at the hospital. “People were running. There were so many people.”
• Reuters (via Yahoo!) says police confirmed they arrested three suspects “on the spot,” reports that everyone including journalists were denied access to the area. Reuters also has Jason Stearns, Great Lakes expert at Yale University, saying “Grenade attacks are never an attempt to overthrow the government but rather to influence the political climate.”
• The Monitor (Uganda) reports one dead, 14 wounded; other outlets put reports of wounded, based on “witness reports,” at around 20.  The Monitor (Kigali dateline, “agencies” byline) has Police Chief Eric Kayaringa saying, “There is a possibility of it being FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), or criminals, or an accident. It can be any of that. We can’t confirm that for now.”   That’s the most I’ve seen on the who-dunnit.
• But Kayaringa tells CNN International, “It’s too early to put blame.”
• CNN International uses Ministry of Information director general as its main source, but the information is largely the same as in other wires.
• AFP (via Sydney Morning Herald) is the only news wire to report that Police Chief Kayaringa said two of the seven victims are children.
• The BBC cribs from the wires, including the report about children; Al Jazeera quotes their guy on the ground journalist analyzing the day’s events stuff.  (Update: As I reread the post pulling reporters’ names for another post, I realize this could sound jerky.  I didn’t mean it that way; it rolled out conversationally, but that doesn’t always translate in static print.  Sorry, Andrew.)
• First article from the scene by local agency RNA.
• VOA gets ahold of the country’s Minster of Justice, Tharcisse Karugarama, who says, “If anybody has a grudge, any reason whatever to fight the government, they should fight the government through means that would target the government, if that is what they are against. But, throwing hand grenades among (a) very busy population is evil. It is unacceptable and I would condemn it in the strongest terms possible.”  He adds that the perpetrators will be caught and “neutralized.”
• Al Jazeera news video runs at 4:59 am local time (which is why I’m just now getting it; I got more sleep than Andrew did, obviously.)

There are plenty of news stories on Monday’s election, of course, in which incumbent Paul Kagame won with 93 percent of the vote.

Here’s what I can tell you: It’s not just that everything is quiet, like I said before. It’s totally normal. When I went out, there were as many cars grinding up the hill as there usually are. There were as many people on the streets as I’d expect for 9 p.m. on a Wednesday. Restaurants and bars weren’t suffering. Tonight feels like any other night in Kigali… which might sound weird to outside readers, judging from the phone calls and emails I’m getting from folks who don’t live in Rwanda. But here, eh, things are okay.

They’re so okay, that when at about 10 pm I ran into a guy I suspected, from his fancy schmancy video camera, was a news journalist, I said, “Hey, so what happened tonight?”  He said, “Oh, not much.”  I said, “Grenades at Rubangura I heard?”  He said, “Yeah, but no one was killed.  So not much interest.”

We can be charitable and assume he meant, “Not much interest from my editor, who may or may not buy this story from my hungry freelance fingers.”  But my friend and I had just spent a half hour texting and calling, between us, 50 or 60 people to make sure they were okay… So we weren’t feeling too charitable.