(JED/IFEX) – Crispin Kalala Mpotoyi, director of the private radio-television station “Débout Kasaï”, which broadcasts in Mbujimayi (capital of East Kasai province, 1000 kilometres from Kinshasa, in the middle of the Democratic Republic of Congo), who was arrested on Wednesday 10 October 2001, was released on Saturday 13 October, after paying US$500 bail. His programme […]
(JED/IFEX) – Crispin Kalala Mpotoyi, director of the private radio-television station “Débout Kasaï”, which broadcasts in Mbujimayi (capital of East Kasai province, 1000 kilometres from Kinshasa, in the middle of the Democratic Republic of Congo), who was arrested on Wednesday 10 October 2001, was released on Saturday 13 October, after paying US$500 bail. His programme was suspended until further notice.
The journalist was arrested by Congolese National Police (PNC) Special Services agents and taken to the Mbujimayi Public Prosecutor’s Office cells before being transferred to the Mbujimayi Central Prison. Kalala was accused of “slander against the political and military authorities and leaders of the diamond mining firms MIBA (Minière de Bakwanga) and Sengamines.”
Every Tuesday, Kalala hosted a well-known programme in Tshiluba (a language spoken in the two Kasai provinces) named “Diamant dia Kasaï” (The Diamond of Kasai), in which he denounced, among other things, the systematic pillaging of diamonds. Revenues from diamond sales do not benefit the local population, who do not even have sufficient drinking water and electricity.
The journalist has previously been arrested several times because of the opinions he expressed on his programme. He said he was neither “brutalised, beaten nor tortured” while in detention.
