(JED/IFEX) – Raphaël Paluku Kyana, director of Radio rurale de Kanyabayonga (RRKA) radio station, was released from detention on Thursday 14 March 2002. He was arrested on 9 March in Bunagana, a town located at the Democratic Republic of Congo’s border with Uganda. His personal effects and money, however, were not returned to him at […]
(JED/IFEX) – Raphaël Paluku Kyana, director of Radio rurale de Kanyabayonga (RRKA) radio station, was released from detention on Thursday 14 March 2002. He was arrested on 9 March in Bunagana, a town located at the Democratic Republic of Congo’s border with Uganda. His personal effects and money, however, were not returned to him at the time of his release.
The journalist was arrested by Immigration Department (Direction générale des migrations, DGM) agents while traveling to Nairobi for a training workshop at the CETA (Conférence des Eglises de toute l’Afrique) Communications Training Centre. Following the workshop, Paluku was expecting to travel to Mbuji-Mayi (located in an area under the Kinshasa government’s control) to attend a Congolese Community Radio Stations’ Association (Association des radios communautaires du Congo) meeting. He was jailed for five days in a DGM prison, accused of being in a zone controlled by the Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie/Goma (RCD/Goma), though his radio station is located in a zone controlled by the RCD/ML a different faction of the same rebel movement.
In addition, RCD/Goma security services agents arrested CREDDHO (Research Centre for the Environment, Democracy and Human Rights) Director-General Richard Muhindo Bayunda on Friday 15 March at around 4:00 p.m. (local time). He had earlier demanded that all of Paluku’s personal effects be returned to him and had refused to pay the journalist’s jailers the US$60 they demanded for his release. Bayunda is currently imprisoned in a DGM jail in Goma. He was beaten and tortured according to witnesses who visited him in his cell.
