(JED/IFEX) – “Le Potentiel,” an independent Kinshasa daily, asserted in its Tuesday 2 May 2000 edition that its publisher, Modeste Mutinga Mutuishayi, received four telephone calls on Saturday 29 April from unknown people, including two women. The callers ordered Mutinga to change “the editorial line of his newspaper, otherwise we will deal severely with him […]
(JED/IFEX) – “Le Potentiel,” an independent Kinshasa daily, asserted in its Tuesday 2 May 2000 edition that its publisher, Modeste Mutinga Mutuishayi, received four telephone calls on Saturday 29 April from unknown people, including two women. The callers ordered Mutinga to change “the editorial line of his newspaper, otherwise we will deal severely with him and his newspaper.”
The same day, the editorial offices of the daily “Le Potentiel” received a summons from the National Information Agency (Agence nationale des renseignements, ANR) addressed, however, to Gustave Kalenga Kabanda, publisher of the weekly “La Flamme du Congo.” In last week’s edition of the paper, Kabanda published information stating that the city of Lubumbashi was under threat.
On Sunday 30 April, a team of ANR agents appeared at the Recto Verso printing house of the Le Potentiel press group in Kinshasa/Makala to install agents responsible for censoring all articles appearing in “Le Potentiel” and all other newspapers printed at Recto Verso. The management of “Le Potentiel” asked the ANR agents to formulate their demand in writing.
