Congo: Troops Assault Three Journalists Documenting Land Dispute
At least 12 members of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo beat and arrested three journalists on June 28.
The journalists—Jeef Ngoyi, a reporter for the U.N.-backed Radio Okapi; Marie-Louise Malou, a reporter for the state-owned Radio Télévision Nationale Congolaise (RTNC); and Jiresse Nkelani, a camera operator in training for the RTNC2.
According to the report and interviews with Malou and Fiston Wavingana, an RTNC camera operator who observed the event and talked to CPJ, the three journalists had been reporting a land dispute in the capital city of Kinshasa.
According to a tweet by a local journalist and a Radio Okapi worker who talked to CPJ on the condition of anonymity out of fear for their safety, the authorities freed Malou later that day and Ngoyi and Nkelani on Thursday after interventions by the U.N. mission to the DRC. The media members were not charged with any sort of misconduct.
“DRC authorities should hold accountable those responsible for arresting and violently abusing journalists Jeef Ngoyi, Marie-Louise Malou Mbela, and Jiresse Nkelani,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, in New York.
“The repeated arrests and attacks on Congolese journalists by security forces that are supposed to be protecting the public make for an alarming pattern that must be reversed.”
The journalists were assaulted shortly after interviewing a guy who said he was forced out of his home by troops acting on orders from the DRC Minister of Urban Planning and Habitat.
A Twitter video obtained by a local journalist appears to show Ngoyi, Malou, and Nkelani seated in the back of a vehicle following their detention, together with at least two other individuals CPJ was unable to identify. Two armed soldiers stood over them, and one of them could be seen striking them with a coil of rope.
The troops held the reporters at the regional office of the Military Detection of Anti-Patriotic Activities, or DEMIAP for short.
According to Ngoyi's statement to CPJ, the beatings did not cause any serious injuries.
A spokesman for the FARDC, Sylvain Ekenge, said the journalists' detention was the result of an attack on the troops. A local DEMIAP official who was reached by phone declined to give their name or comment. CPJ’s call to the urban planning minister went unanswered.
It is also no news that David Ramazani, the head of Buniaactualité TV and the Buniaactualité.cd news website, was brutally attacked by FARDC soldiers in November 2022, as has many other journalists in recent times.