(JED/IFEX) – Gaston Ngalamulume, a journalist with the Kamako-based and privately-owned Radio Etoile, was arrested and jailed on 22 June 2006 on the orders of Médard Kabutakapu, the local police chief. Kamako is 150 km from Tshikapa, the second city in Western Kasaï Province, in central Democratic Republic of Congo. Early in the morning, Ngalamulume […]
(JED/IFEX) – Gaston Ngalamulume, a journalist with the Kamako-based and privately-owned Radio Etoile, was arrested and jailed on 22 June 2006 on the orders of Médard Kabutakapu, the local police chief. Kamako is 150 km from Tshikapa, the second city in Western Kasaï Province, in central Democratic Republic of Congo.
Early in the morning, Ngalamulume and the station’s director, Emmanuel Muela, received at their news room a summons to appear at the police station. Once there, they were questioned by a judicial police officer about a 21 June broadcast of a radio play that told the story of a woman raped by a police officer.
The police chief then ordered that the tape on which the play was recorded be brought to him. After hearing the tape, he concluded that the play aimed to discredit the police. Furious, the police chief decided to arrest Ngalamulume, who also happens to be a leader of the accused theatre group, and ordered his men to beat up the journalist.
Two weeks earlier, Sosthène Kambidi was arrested on the orders of a police commander in Tshikapa before being released. Ngalamulume is thus the second journalist to be victim of arbitrary measures and abuse of power by powerful military figures in that part of the DR Congo.
