(JED/IFEX) – Guy Kasongo Kilembwe, editor-in-chief of the Kinshasa-based satirical newspaper “Pot-Pourri”, was arrested on 29 August 2003, at around 11:00 a.m. (local time), near the main post office in the capital. The National Police officers who detained the journalist subsequently took him to the police station located behind Kinshasa’s general hospital. At the station, […]
(JED/IFEX) – Guy Kasongo Kilembwe, editor-in-chief of the Kinshasa-based satirical newspaper “Pot-Pourri”, was arrested on 29 August 2003, at around 11:00 a.m. (local time), near the main post office in the capital. The National Police officers who detained the journalist subsequently took him to the police station located behind Kinshasa’s general hospital.
At the station, Kasongo met with Pius Mwabilu, general manager of L’Avenir Group Radio-Television and publisher of the daily “L’Avenir”. Mwabilu told Kasongo, “You humiliated me in your newspaper, now I am going to make you suffer.” The journalist was then interrogated for close to an hour. He remained in police custody and was transferred to the Kinshasa/Gombe Public Prosecutor’s Office later that same afternoon.
Kasongo’s wife, who spoke to JED after conferring with her husband, said the journalist had an altercation with several newspaper vendors shortly before his arrest. The vendors were reportedly angered by a recent “Pot-Pourri” article in which they were described as “Pius Mwabilu’s baggage handlers”.
In its 22 August edition (issue 140), “Pot-Pourri” published a front-page article entitled, “Former Acl-Pt [ed. note: former Kabila Parliament, of which Mwabilu was a member] parliamentarians are co-owners of a television station”. The article said a sum of US$120,000 that Chinese businessperson Sabine Vundwawe had given Mwabilu for the former parliamentarians had never been turned over to them. The newspaper alleged that the money was used instead to launch L’Avenir Group Radio-Television.
The article has led to a serious dispute between “L’Avenir” and “Pot-Pourri”. Both papers have been attacking each other in the press since it first appeared.
