(JED/IFEX) – On Saturday 11 March 2000, the director-general of the Bureau of Illegally Acquired Goods (Office des biens mal acquis, OBMA) presented an order – issued by Justice Minister Mwenze Kongolo and dated 7 March – to journalists and other staff of the private station Radiotélévision Kin Malebo (RTKM). The order requisitioned RTKM on […]
(JED/IFEX) – On Saturday 11 March 2000, the director-general of the Bureau of Illegally Acquired Goods (Office des biens mal acquis, OBMA) presented an order – issued by Justice Minister Mwenze Kongolo and dated 7 March – to journalists and other staff of the private station Radiotélévision Kin Malebo (RTKM). The order requisitioned RTKM on behalf of the Congolese State. The director-general was accompanied by a Congolese national police squad and a number of Bureau inspectors.
An inventory of RTKM’s furniture and buildings was carried out, and police officers stood guard both in front of the station’s Kinshasa/Gombe administrative offices and outside the Kinshasa/Ngaliema broadcasting station. However, RTKM continued to broadcast without interruption. When contacted, the minister of information and tourism, Didier Mumengi, minimised the importance of the incident, referring to it as a misunderstanding. No official reason was offered for the requisitioning of the station. Preliminary information suggests that the OBMA will name a responsible party to manage the private station on behalf of the State.
On Monday 13 March, the acting director-general of RTKM, Lumbana Kapasa, told JED that his personnel “is quite distressed” since Minister Kongolo made the decision to take control of this private station on the State’s behalf. Armed officers of the Congolese national police remain stationed in the offices of RTKM.
RTKM is a radio and television station which belongs to Aubain Ngongo Luwowo, who was minister of information under Mobutu on several occasions. He is currently living in exile. The station has a long-standing reputation for its independent stance in its reporting. This requisition represents another setback for press freedom in the already heavily hit audiovisual sector.
The OBMA is a bureau which was created by the new regime shortly after it took power. It is under the administrative umbrella of the Ministry of Justice and is responsible for the management of goods – said to have been “illegally acquired” – which were seized from dignitaries of the deposed regime of Marshal Mobutu Sese Seko. There is a great deal of controversy surrounding the means with which the bureau requisitions and manages these goods. Participants in the work of the National Consultation (Consultation Nationale), which is being held in Kinshasa, have even called for the bureau’s dissolution.
