Attacks on reporters by governor’s bodyguards in DRC’s Kasai province
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) joins Journalist in Danger (JED), its partner organization in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in calling on Denis Kambayi, the governor of the south-central province of Kasai, to put a stop to a wave of physical attacks on journalists by his bodyguards.
According to the information gathered by JED, which wrote to the governor on 8 May expressing “deep concern” about the violence, his bodyguards manhandled three local radio reporters during a hearing in the law courts in the provincial capital on 3 May, took them to the police station and held them there for several hours.
The previous week, on 27 April, three other local journalists were physically attacked by the governor’s bodyguards after attending one of his press conferences in the governor’s palace and, since then, have been receiving threatening phone calls. A woman journalist, Elisée Lusamba, was also roughed up by one of the governor’s bodyguards while covering a civil society event on 28 April to which the governor had been invited.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has the same position in RSF's 2018 World Press Freedom Index as last year – 154th out of 180 countries.
Democratic Republic of Congo
