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Congo-Kinshasa: Minister Orders Bodyguards To Beat Up Two TVJournalists
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Reporters sans Frontières (Paris)
PRESS RELEASE
24 October 2007
Posted to the web 24 October 2007
Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the beating which TV reporter Heustache Namunanika and cameraman Didier Lofumbwa received at the behest of higher education minister Sylvain Ngabu on 22 October. The beating was carried out by Ngabu's police bodyguards in his Kinshasa office and in his presence.
The two journalists, who work for the privately-owned Horizon 33 television station, had interviewed Ngabu about his decision to suspend Dieudonné Kalindye as rector of the CIDEP open university. The interview was broadcast on 21 October together with an interview with Kalindye describing his suspension as arbitrary.
After seeing the report, Ngabu ordered Namunanika and Lofumbwa to come to his office and scolded them for interviewing Kalindye. When they insisted it was their duty to give both sides of the story, an enraged Ngabu summoned his bodyguards and ordered them to "correct" the journalists. After beating them in front of Ngabu, the policemen threw them out of the ministry's premises.
In a letter to the prime minister protesting against the minister's behaviour, Journalist in Danger (JED), the Reporters Without Borders partner organisation in Democratic Republic of Congo, wrote that the two journalists' clothes were torn and that "the cameraman had a bruised right eye and injuries to his right knee and chest."
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Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned journalists and press freedom throughout the world. It has nine national sections (Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland). It has representatives in Bangkok, London, New York, Tokyo and Washington. And it has more than 120 correspondents worldwide.
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