(JED/IFEX) – Feu d’Or Bonsange Ifonge, a journalist with the thrice-weekly Kinshasa newspaper “L’Alarme”, was tranferred to the CPRK (Kinshasa Penitentiary and Reeducation Centre, formerly the Makala Central Prison) on Saturday 2 December 2000. Two JED investigators met with him on Sunday 3 December in his CPRK cell. The journalist was arrested on Saturday 11 […]
(JED/IFEX) – Feu d’Or Bonsange Ifonge, a journalist with the thrice-weekly Kinshasa newspaper “L’Alarme”, was tranferred to the CPRK (Kinshasa Penitentiary and Reeducation Centre, formerly the Makala Central Prison) on Saturday 2 December 2000. Two JED investigators met with him on Sunday 3 December in his CPRK cell.
The journalist was arrested on Saturday 11 November, early in the morning, at the Place Victoire in Kinshasa/Kalamu, as he was distributing issue 236 of his newspaper, which had been published that same day.
On 12 November, Bonsange Ifonge was taken to the National Information Agency’s (Agence nationale de renseignements, ANR) offices in Kinshasa/Gombe and locked in a cell, where he remained unitl his recent transfer to the central prison.
“L’Alarme” newspaper’s director has still not heard from Aristote Dola, Kala Bokango and Guy Batshika, three other journalists who were with Bonsange Ifonge on 11 November at the time of his arrest. Other sources have claimed that the three journalists are in hiding.
“L’Alarme” had published a lead article by Dola in the issue in question titled: “Mbandaka is burning…”. In the article, the newspaper contended that the population of Mbandaka – the province of Equator’s main city, in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s north-west, under the control of forces loyal to President Laurent-Désiré Kabila – is “fearing an imminent attack” by rebel troops of the Movement for the Liberation of the Congo (Mouvement pour la libération du Congo, MLC).
According to the newspaper, because of their fears, the population has abandoned all productive work. Moreover, private shipowners are no longer willing to take the risk of sending their ships to the city. As a consequence, explains “L’Alarme”, prices have soared, leading to fears among non-governmental organisations of a coming famine in Mbandaka.
