(JED/IFEX) – On Wednesday 8 August 2001, Radio Maendeleo, which broadcasts in Bukavu, a county town of South-Kivu Province under rebel control, started broadcasting anew after a two-year ban was lifted by Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie (RCD, a rebel movement supported by Rwanda that controls the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern region) officials. Radio […]
(JED/IFEX) – On Wednesday 8 August 2001, Radio Maendeleo, which broadcasts in Bukavu, a county town of South-Kivu Province under rebel control, started broadcasting anew after a two-year ban was lifted by Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie (RCD, a rebel movement supported by Rwanda that controls the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern region) officials. Radio Maendeleo was barred from broadcasting on 21 July 1999 and its materials (a mixing console and transmitter) were seized by the RCD.
The resumption of programming comes seven months after Kin-Kiey Mulumba, who heads the RCD’s department of information, signed an order “lifting the suspension of Radio Maendeleo’s operating licence.” The confiscated materials have yet to be returned. In order to start broadcasting, the station plans to use “temporary materials which are set up locally.”
Radio Maendeleo is a community station which was launched in 1993 by local non-governmental development organisations. The station’s independent voice led to the decision to ban it and confiscate its materials in 1999. In a press release from Bukavu dated 23 July 2001, which JED received, the station’s managers state that they “await a thrust of solidarity that will allow for the establishment of freedom of expression and tolerance and the promotion of independent, credible and responsible journalism in the Great Lakes [region].”
