(JED/IFEX) – Dieudonné Karl Nawezi, a sports journalist for the RTNC’s (Radiotélévision nationale congolaise, public network) provincial station in Katanga, has been locked up since 7 May 2002 in a cell at the ANR (National Intelligence Agency) in Lubumbashi, the provincial capital of Katanga. The journalist was arrested at 8 a.m. (local time) at his […]
(JED/IFEX) – Dieudonné Karl Nawezi, a sports journalist for the RTNC’s (Radiotélévision nationale congolaise, public network) provincial station in Katanga, has been locked up since 7 May 2002 in a cell at the ANR (National Intelligence Agency) in Lubumbashi, the provincial capital of Katanga. The journalist was arrested at 8 a.m. (local time) at his home by two agents of the ANR’s Katanga branch. He is charged with “making political propanda for Katebe Katoto, while reporting in South Africa on a soccer match between the Orlando Pirates (a South African team) and the Tout-Puissant Mazembe (a Congolese team)”. Katoto is a declared presidential candidate of the transitional authority in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Nawezi broadcast his report on the soccer match on RTNC. Supporters of the Congolese team TP Mazembe could be seen around the stadium, wearing t-shirts with the image of Katoto, who was once TP Mazembe’s director.
JED demands the journalist’s release insofar as he was only doing his job to inform the public of all the aspects of the event he was covering. JED considers this arrest to be a flagrant violation of the freedom to inform and to be informed, guaranteed by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as by the DRC law on press freedom.
JED notes that Nawezi is the thirty-first journalist deprived of his freedom as a result of his work since Joseph Kabila came to power in the DRC in January 2001.
JED recalls that this is the second time that a Congolese sports reporter has been arrested by the ANR for covering a sports event in South Africa involving Katoto and the football team TP Mazembe. On 5 December 2001, Frédéric Kitengie, a Congolese journalist, working in Johannesburg for the sports service of Radio France International (RFI), was arrested in Kinshasa while he was staying there for private reasons. His arrest was linked to an interview granted to him by TP Mazembe’s president, who happens to be Katoto’s brother (see IFEX alerts of 14, 11 et 10 December 2001).
