(JED/IFEX) – On Tuesday 11 July 2000, from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. (local time), ten officers of the National Information Agency (Agence nationale des renseignements, ANR), including two officers dressed in Rapid Intervention Police (Police d’intervention rapide, PIR) uniforms, searched the editorial offices of the weekly “Vision”, in Kinshasa/Gombe. The officers did not have […]
(JED/IFEX) – On Tuesday 11 July 2000, from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. (local time), ten officers of the National Information Agency (Agence nationale des renseignements, ANR), including two officers dressed in Rapid Intervention Police (Police d’intervention rapide, PIR) uniforms, searched the editorial offices of the weekly “Vision”, in Kinshasa/Gombe. The officers did not have a legal summons authorising the search.
Following their search, the officers seized all of the newspaper’s computers, archives, a radio, as well as the briefcases of journalists who were in the newsroom, and left in a green Isuzu Patrol jeep.
No motive was given to explain this search. Many bystanders witnessed the operation, including JED’s president. However, journalists from “Vision” told JED that during the search, the head of the operation, one Commander Lumu, who was not otherwise identified, told the newspaper’s publisher: “you know that one of you has been named as a member of parliament and that you seek to sabotage the government’s actions. Tell your colleagues not to tell stupidities about this matter. Otherwise, they’ll have to deal with me.”
At 11:00 a.m., the ANR officers went to the Palace of the Nation (seat of the Congolese Parliament), where they arrested Bonane Yangazi, who was managing editor of “Vision” until last week, when he was named as a member of parliament, by decree of President Kabila. It was after his interrogation at the Kinshasa/Gombe offices of the ANR that the ten ANR officers visited the editorial offices of the newspaper “Vision”, accompanied by Yangazi. The former managing editor of “Vision” was taken to the ANR’s underground cells at about 5:00 p.m.
