(JED/IFEX) – On Friday 14 April 2000, the State Security Council (Conseil de sécurité d’État, CSE) informed Jean-René Mputu Biduaya and Jean-René Lumbana Kapasa, information director at the private television station RAGA and programming director at Radiotélévision Kin Malebo (RTKM), respectively, that they were forbidden from leaving Kinshasa until further notice. The authorities from the […]
(JED/IFEX) – On Friday 14 April 2000, the State Security Council (Conseil de sécurité d’État, CSE) informed Jean-René Mputu Biduaya and Jean-René Lumbana Kapasa, information director at the private television station RAGA and programming director at Radiotélévision Kin Malebo (RTKM), respectively, that they were forbidden from leaving Kinshasa until further notice. The authorities from the CSE, which is the president’s security service, explained that this decision was motivated by the need to allow for the completion of an inquiry into a matter in which the two journalists have been implicated.
Mputu Biduaya and Lumbana Kapasa are accused of having hosted Antoine Gabriel Kyungu wa Kumwanza, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC’s) ambassador in Saudi Arabia, on their private television stations on Sunday 9 April.
During the broadcast of the programmes “Temps forts” on RTKM and “À vous la parole” on RAGA, on 9 April at 12:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. (local time), respectively, Kyungu, who is the former governor of the province of Katanga and a former ambassador in Kenya, severely criticised the way in which the DRC was being governed. Kyungu notably stated that Congolese citizens no longer had any faith in President Kabila’s government. Because of his statements on these programmes, he was arrested a short time later in Kinshasa.
On Tuesday 11 April, Mputu Biduaya was briefly detained before being heard by the director of the National Information Agency (Agence nationale de renseignements, ANR) for the city of Kinshasa. The director reminded him that Kyungu’s political party, the Union of Independent Federalists and Republicans (Union des fédéralistes et des républicains indépendants, UFERI) was banned, and that Kyungu was not allowed to speak on political issues on television.
On Friday 14 April, Mputu Biduaya and Lumbana Kapasa were heard by the head of State’s special advisor on security matters, Nono Lutula. Mputu Biduaya was put in a cell for a few hours, until he agreed to hand over the cassette containing a recording of the incriminating programme to the CSE.
