(JED/IFEX) – On 9 December 2002, at around 1:20 p.m. (local time), intelligence services agents from the Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie (RCD, a rebel movement that controls the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern region with Rwandan support), accompanied by police officers, closed the offices of Radio Maendeleo, a community radio station based in Bukavu, […]
(JED/IFEX) – On 9 December 2002, at around 1:20 p.m. (local time), intelligence services agents from the Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie (RCD, a rebel movement that controls the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern region with Rwandan support), accompanied by police officers, closed the offices of Radio Maendeleo, a community radio station based in Bukavu, South Kivu province’s main city.
All of the radio station’s employees and visitors to the station’s library and Internet room were rounded up and forced onto a waiting bus. The detainees were all released a few minutes later, with the exception of Radio Maendeleo director Kizito Mushizi Nfundiko and news director Omba Kamembele.
Information collected at the scene indicates that RCD officials were offended by information broadcast by Radio Maendeleo on 7 and 8 December. During call-in programmes, the radio station aired information to the effect that the RCD’s introduction of numerous taxes was hurting local citizens, including new licence plate fees.
In JED’s 2002 annual report on the press freedom situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which was made public on 9 December in Kinshasa, the organisation noted that 33 journalists were arrested in the country in 2002, including nine in the territories under the control of various rebel movements, such as the RCD.
Launched in 1993, Radio Maendeleo was previously closed by the RCD from 21 July 1999 to 8 August 2001 (see IFEX alerts of 7 August 2001, 16 October 2000, 7 September and 29 July 1999).
