(JED/IFEX) – In a press release issued on Sunday 10 June 2001 in Kinshasa, JED protested against former minister of communications Dominique Sakombi Inongo’s efforts, through various media, to obstruct the work of the commission of inquiry examining the legality of the Sakombi cabinet’s 22 September 2000 decision to seize two private radio and television […]
(JED/IFEX) – In a press release issued on Sunday 10 June 2001 in Kinshasa, JED protested against former minister of communications Dominique Sakombi Inongo’s efforts, through various media, to obstruct the work of the commission of inquiry examining the legality of the Sakombi cabinet’s 22 September 2000 decision to seize two private radio and television stations.
JED is scandalised to conclude that at the very moment that “the Kikaya commission” is nearing the end of its investigation, “the principal author of the private stations’ illegal seizure is getting restless … by making public ‘irrefutable proof’, taken from the newspaper ‘Le SOFT”s archives, which describes the misappropriation of funds that the promoter of RTKM (Radiotélévision Kin Malebo), Ngongo Luwowo, a former minister of information under Mobutu, reportedly carried out in 1993.” Sakombi has gone as far as asking the state prosecutor to examine the case. Yet, the former minister’s statement also indicates that the reported misappropriation exposed by “Le SOFT” was already the object of a court case which resulted in the Kinshasa/Gombe High Court’s 14 July 1994 decision to sentence the newspaper and its director, Kin-Kiey Mulumba, to pay US$500,000 in damages and interest for defamation. The Kinshasa/Gombe Appeals Court upheld the sentence in ruling RCA 17215 of 23 March 1995.
JED recommends that the Kikaya Commission continue its investigations and that the government recognise the serious attack on press freedom and private property which this case constitutes, as well and the former minister’s abuse of power.
To recall, in his 3 May message marking World Press Freedom Day, Minister of Communications Kikaya bin Karubi – who had just taken up his post – announced that a commission would be set up to examine the legality of his predecessor’s decision to seize the private stations RTKM and Canal Kin (owned by rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba). The commission’s members include experts from the President’s Office, the ministries of Justice, Human Rights and Finance and the Central Bank of Congo.
