(JED/IFEX) – Message de vie Radiotelevision (RTMV), a Kinshasa-based religious broadcaster owned by Pastor Fernando Kutino’s Army of Victory Church (Église Armée de Victoire), was shut down on 10 June 2003. According to various testimonies collected by JED, Congolese National Police officers in civilian clothes raided the Army of Victory Church’s premises, where the radio […]
(JED/IFEX) – Message de vie Radiotelevision (RTMV), a Kinshasa-based religious broadcaster owned by Pastor Fernando Kutino’s Army of Victory Church (Église Armée de Victoire), was shut down on 10 June 2003.
According to various testimonies collected by JED, Congolese National Police officers in civilian clothes raided the Army of Victory Church’s premises, where the radio station is based, on 10 June, at around 10:00 a.m. (local time). The officers assaulted Pastor Kutino, who was holding an assembly meeting with members of the “Sauvons le Congo” (“Save the Congo”) movement, a group he launched one month ago. The church and radio station’s offices were both ransacked, and journalists at the scene were roughed up. Later that same afternoon, uniformed police officers raided the broadcaster’s television studios in Kinshasa/Ngaliema. They confiscated RTMV’s equipment and transmitters and left.
In a statement to the press, Colonel Raüs Chalwe, director of the police special services, gave a different version of events, saying “thugs” had attacked Pastor Kutino and police had merely intervened to stop the melee and prevent an “escalation.” Eyewitnesses at the scene all said the colonel’s men led the police raid.
