(JED/IFEX) – Kabeya Pindi Pasi, programming director for the Kinshasa-based private television station Tropicana TV and president of the National Union of Congolese Newspapers (Union nationale de la presse congolaise, UNPC), was arrested on 17 June 2004, at approximately 12:00 p.m. (local time), after violating a court-imposed ban on foreign music broadcasts. Pasi was taken […]
(JED/IFEX) – Kabeya Pindi Pasi, programming director for the Kinshasa-based private television station Tropicana TV and president of the National Union of Congolese Newspapers (Union nationale de la presse congolaise, UNPC), was arrested on 17 June 2004, at approximately 12:00 p.m. (local time), after violating a court-imposed ban on foreign music broadcasts. Pasi was taken to the State Security Court (Cour de sûreté de l’Etat, CSE) and held for more than five hours before he was finally released on the orders of Press and Information Minister Vital Kamerhe.
During his detention, a judicial investigator questioned the journalist at length on his station’s broadcast of foreign music videos, particularly rap videos, despite a recent suspension order issued by the Song and Performance Censorship Commission, effective “until further notice”.
The commission’s letter, signed by CSE Public Prosecutor Théotime Kikongi Ki Masala and distributed to all television station heads, stipulates, among other things, that “given the seriousness of this attack on our values, which has offended the nation’s highest authorities, it is time to put a stop to this debauchery [. . . ].”
