(JED/IFEX) – In a 28 May 2004 letter to Interior, Decentralisation and Security Minister Théophile Mbemba Fundu, JED expressed its concern over the growing number of journalists facing harassment and death threats in Katanga province, and particularly in the city of Lubumbashi, by individuals linked to Gabriel Kyungu wa Kumwanza, a parliamentarian and former governor […]
(JED/IFEX) – In a 28 May 2004 letter to Interior, Decentralisation and Security Minister Théophile Mbemba Fundu, JED expressed its concern over the growing number of journalists facing harassment and death threats in Katanga province, and particularly in the city of Lubumbashi, by individuals linked to Gabriel Kyungu wa Kumwanza, a parliamentarian and former governor of Katanga during the ethnic purges of 1992. Copies of the letter have been sent to all levels of Congolese government.
In its letter to the minister, JED highlighted the cases of at least three journalists who received serious death threats between 25 and 28 May, simply for exercising their duty to inform freely and responsibly. The latest case is that of Jean-Jacques Luboya Samba Shake, publisher of the Lubumbashi-based newspaper “La Vérité” (“The Truth”). Shake published two articles that have made him the target of local vigilantes since 27 May. The first, which appeared in the paper’s 27 May edition, was entitled “When Democracy Becomes Politics of the Worst Kind: Kyungu wa Kumwanza Determined to Destabilise the Government of Katanga”. The second, appearing in the same edition, talks about a bounty set on the head of Lubumbashi’s Southerners’ Association (Communauté des sudistes de Lubumbashi) President Jean-Claude Muyambo, by Kumwanza supporters.
Prior to the Shake case, similar threats had been made to Rose Lukanu Tshakwiza, a journalist with Congolese National Radiotelevision’s (Radiotélévision nationale congolaise, RTNC) Lubumbashi station and a local Radio France International (RFI) correspondent. The threats were received on 25 May from anonymous phone callers claiming to be members of the youth branch of the Union of Congolese Federalists (Union des fédéralistes congolais, UNAFEC), a party whose national president, Honorius Kisimba Ngoy, is also justice minister. Kumwanza is the party’s local leader.
UNAFEC militants, including Kumwanza’s advisor Dieudonné Bamoina and the advisor to the justice minister, known only as “Sakatelo”, accuse Tshakwiza of failing to mention, during the 24 May broadcast of her show “Guest of the Week” (“L’Invité de la semaine”), the deaths resulting from a heavy-handed police break-up of a 19 May UNAFEC march of nude women in Lubumbashi. The marchers were protesting the passing-over of their own local leader, Kumwanza, in the appointment of a new governor to Katanga province. Tshakwiza claims, however, that there were no deaths at the march.
Pierrot Nsenga, a journalist at the same local RTNC station and a Lubumbashi correspondent for the Kinshasa-based newspaper “Le Révélateur”, has also received death threats. Nsenga published a series of articles since the events of 19 May, criticising Kumwanza’s “anarchist behaviour” after being passed over for the provincial governor’s appointment. Youth members of UNAFEC have threatened to put him “in the cemetery.”
In the context of the current climate of insecurity reigning in the province after recent assassinations by UNAFEC militants, JED called on the minister to mobilise all provincial authorities with a view to ending the threats on the above-mentioned journalists, to ensure their safety and to open a judicial inquiry into the cases and investigate the individuals identified as the authors of the threats.
