(JED/IFEX) – On 29 March 2004, at 11:00 a.m. (local time), the head of the National Intelligence Agency’s (Agence nationale des renseignements, ANR) Mutshima office issued a broadcast ban against Radio Mutshima, a local radio station. Radio Mutshima director Patient Kolela told JED that the ANR has accused the station of operating illegally. Mutshima is […]
(JED/IFEX) – On 29 March 2004, at 11:00 a.m. (local time), the head of the National Intelligence Agency’s (Agence nationale des renseignements, ANR) Mutshima office issued a broadcast ban against Radio Mutshima, a local radio station. Radio Mutshima director Patient Kolela told JED that the ANR has accused the station of operating illegally. Mutshima is located 120 kilometres from the city of Tshikapa, in West Kasai province, close to the Angolan border.
On 27 March, Luc Tshibwabwa, a journalist with Radio Canal Promotion, was assaulted and wounded in the left eye as he was leaving a Tshikapa trial that pitted journalist Casimir Twite, a correspondent for “L’Alerte” newspaper, against court bailiff Mulumba Nkoshi. Twite had earlier been charged with making “harmful accusations” against Nkoshi. Tshibwabwa was struck by the bailiff’s son, Kanku.
Along with other Tshikapa-based journalists, Tshibwabwa had come to watch the final hearing in the trial. Once Twite was acquitted, the other journalists in attendance, including Tshibwabwa, celebrated the victory vociferously. Unhappy over his father’s defeat, the bailiff’s son assaulted Tshibwabwa. The journalist pressed charges against his attacker later that day.
On 26 March, at 11:00 a.m., Ali Kitoko, a journalist with the private radio station Concorde Nationale, was detained briefly at the ANR’s Tshikapa headquarters. He had gone to the offices in response to an “invitation” from the agency. The journalist was interrogated and an ANR officer accused him of “circulating false news in order to undermine state security.” When reached by telephone, Kitoko told JED that in his 25 March on-air report, he had discussed a list of likely new governors that had been published in a Kinshasa newspaper. The present governor of the province, Claudel André Lubaya, was not included in the list. Kitoko was released about three hours later.
On the evening of 28 March, Radio Maria journalist Solange Lusiku was forced to go into hiding in Bukavu, South Kivu province’s main town. ANR officers accuse her of having called attention, in her radio programme broadcast the same day, to the discovery of an illegal firearm belonging to a student at Bukavu’s Institute of Higher Learning (Institut Supérieur Pédagogique). Lusiku told JED she had received telephone threats from unknown persons who said they had a “score to settle” with her.
On 17 March, at around 4:00 p.m., also in Bukavu, police officers raided the offices of “Le Souverain” newspaper and confiscated a billboard that is used to post Kinshasa newspapers. The officers did not give an explanation for the seizure.
