MWANDISHI wa habari mkongwe nchini, Ansbert Ngurumo amekimbilia uamishoni nchini Finland kwa madai kuwa usalama wa maisha yake ulikuwa hatarini.
ANSBERT NGURUMO
I criticized the powerful - and I had to leave my home country
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When I decided to become a journalist 20 years ago, I could not wait for this to become such a difficult profession. An invitation to end up getting both enemies and friends.
And I could not imagine getting friends from a very long distance from home - friends who would eventually save me from my enemies in Tanzania.
I mean the enemies of journalistic truth, the authorities who want journalism to do just what they want to print or broadcast on a TV. I mean those power-hungry people who are so corrupt that they imagine themselves as hosts-no longer the people's bosses.
On 2 October 2017, the prominent Samaritans warned me of the plot of the slaughter team to deprive my soul of criticizing the president, the rescued friends came from far away - Finland, Kenya, USA, Denmark and Sweden, with the exception of a local human rights organization.
And when the journalist of the Mwananchi newspaper , Azory Gwanda, was abducted on 21 November 2017 - probably from the same truths of the enemy - I had already been transferred to Kenya in Nairobi thanks to the New York-based CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) .
Gwanda is still missing, and the government of Tanzania remains silent. I can not help but think that this other journalist was not as lucky as me. He did not get the clue from the good Samaritans and did not rescue his distant colleagues.
* * *
"I never imagined myself fleeing and hiding."
To me, this only tells us that even many others are suffering or dying in the absence of local help. Initiatives to protect journalists, artists, politicians and activists whom the authorities are harassing for their work.
I never imagined myself fleeing and hiding from "strangers" who have now forced me to be separated from my family and my country for four months.
Related party even does not know all the hardships that I had to go through so far heard from behind me kill the group. How I escaped the paymasters for two weeks moving from one hotel to another in Dar es Salaam. And that this would only be the start of my long distant journey when I drift from place to place seeking asylum.
My friends and my enemies do not know that one night I was hiding in the fourth hotel when the hotel manager came to my speech. He urged me to leave the hotel the next morning because he had been hinted that "some people in the government" had known my position. They had traced me and questioned me.
The director also told me that two of them had been introduced to the police and booked the same rooms in the same hotel. That's why the leader believed my life was in danger.
* * *
"It seemed paradoxical that widows and orphans offered me an asylum."
Right after the hotel manager spoke to me and left my room, I felt cold sweat. High pressure in the blood seemed inevitable. So I made the decision to leave the hotel the same way the next day, but immediately.
My friend came to the scene in 15 minutes. Because of panic and shock, I did not even know where we left. He just drove, but there was no goal.
I traveled to my journalist friend, who is also the main opposition party CHADEMA representative. With him I was taken to a secret shelter in the middle of the night. From there, two weeks after, I saved the CPJ and moved to Nairobi, Kenya.
From Nairobi I was rented from a room organization that works with widows and orphans. It seemed paradoxical that widows and orphans offered shelter to me, a father of five, and a family of 20 people.
The fact that the roof of the roof over my head offered the home of the underprivileged women and girls made me realize how foolproof I was. At the same time, I realized how painfully we need to provide more resources and support journalists who are in need of help around the world.
For at its best, this aid can save lives.
By. Ansbert Ngurumo,
A Senior Editor and Journalist,
Finland.
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