(JED/IFEX) – The following is an excerpt from a 28 December 2004 JED press release: JED condemns government attempts to confine press to a “Congolese gulag” From 20 to 24 December 2004, a group of 11 journalists from various Kinshasa-based, privately-owned newspapers carried out a mission to Goma, capital of North-Kivu province, to report on […]
(JED/IFEX) – The following is an excerpt from a 28 December 2004 JED press release:
JED condemns government attempts to confine press to a “Congolese gulag”
From 20 to 24 December 2004, a group of 11 journalists from various Kinshasa-based, privately-owned newspapers carried out a mission to Goma, capital of North-Kivu province, to report on the armed conflict that rages in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The group also requested and was granted interviews with Rwandan authorities, including Foreign Minister Charles Morigande and President Paul Kagame.
The journalists reported to JED that they were able to ask both the Rwandan authorities and provincial authorities in North Kivu province “whatever questions they pleased” on the conflict and relations between the DRC and Rwanda.
On their return to Kinshasa, however, the journalists, along with their editors, were summoned by the media regulation authority (Haute autorité des médias, HAM). Some of managing editors were also summoned by the national intelligence agency (l’Agence nationale des renseignements, ANR).
In a 26 December press release to Agence France Presse (AFP), Congolese Information Minister Henri Mova Sakanyi expressed his profound indignation at “the humiliation suffered by certain journalists, [who have been] shamelessly manipulated by the Kigali government.” The minister further claimed that the mission was “in violation of the laws governing the entry and exit of Congolese citizens, particularly journalists, from national territory.”
The minister went on to say that it was “regrettable and unacceptable for the Congolese press to act as a stepping stone [to Rwandan authorities] by spreading [their] propaganda, at a time when Rwandan troops are on Congolese soil sowing misery and death among our fellow citizens in the East (. . .)”
The minister ended his release by calling on the Congolese press to “demonstrate clear-headedness and patriotism [in its reporting] and to join the government and their fellow citizens in [their] efforts to restore sovereignty and peace to the DRC (. . .).”
JED expresses its serious concern over the uproar caused by the journalists’ mission to Rwanda and by the thinly-veiled threats directed at them as a result. JED further notes the following:
1. That journalists in the DRC are confined to a sort of “Congolese-style gulag”, from which exit, either as private citizens or on a work-related mission, is only possible with official permission;
2. That, contrary to the minister’s claims, JED has documentation which proves that the journalists who went to Goma and Kigali did not violate any laws governing Congolese journalists’ entry to and exit from national soil;
3. That, on a strictly professional level, the journalists who traveled to Goma and Kigali did nothing wrong, and that there is nothing to prohibit a journalist from a country at war with another to enter “enemy” territory to gather information;
4. That the DRC, which has ratified every international instrument governing press freedom, in addition to the guarantees by which it is bound under the Transitional Constitution, cannot justifiably deny Mr. Kagame’s right to address the Congolese public through the national media, any more than [Congolese] President Joseph Kabila could justifiably be denied access to the Rwandan public through the Rwandan media, and that journalists who chose to interview Mr. Kagame should therefore not be denounced for exercising their right to do so;
5. And finally, that, since arms have failed to resolve the conflict between the DRC and Rwanda, dialogue must now be allowed to succeed, with the Congolese and Rwandan media playing a major role this regard.
Issued in Kinshasa, 28 December 2004
