H.E. Joseph Kabila
President
Ngaliema
Kinshasa
Democratic Republic of Congo
Fax: (011.243.81) 02120
Your Excellency:
We are outraged to learn that Nicaise Kibel-Bel-Oka, publisher of Les Coulisses in Beni, has been imprisoned on criminal defamation charges for articles published in his newspaper. Our indignation is owing not only to the fact that the reporting at issue has been substantiated at trial. We object even more strongly to the notion that publishing the news in Congo can be a criminal offense.
From Congo’s press-freedom group, Journaliste En Danger, we learn that Kibel-Bel-Oka is in jail because of an article in Les Coulisses last December alleging that Jacques Kiangu, a local businessman, evaded taxes on goods imported from Uganda. Barely three months later, Kibel-Bel-Oka was given a five-year sentence and fined US$2,000. Last month, those penalties were revised to a six-month jail time and a fine of US$5,000 — all despite the provision of evidence by Kibel-Bel-Oka@quot;s attorneys substantiating the reporting in Les Coulisses. Your Excellency, the remedy for Jacques Kiangu — if he feels he has been libeled — should be found in a civil court, as it is in most modern democracies.
According to our colleagues at the Committee to Protect Journalists, legal harassment of journalists in the DRC has accelerated in recent months. Kibel-Bel-Oka now joins two other Congolese journalists imprisoned in June for doing their jobs: Albert Kassa Khamy Mouya, publication director of the weekly newspaper, Le Lauréat; and Lucien-Claude Ngongo, deputy editor of the weekly, Fair Play.
We are well aware of the turmoil accompanying the transition process in the Congo, Your Excellency. And we fail to see how your government’s recent communiqué warning editors against using “words that might discourage the armed forces” or “treating lightly the unfortunate events that threaten the peace process” can be at all re-assuring to Congolese hoping for the re-assertion of democracy.
We shall await word that Nicaise Kibel-Bel-Oka, Albert Kassa Khamy Mouya and Lucien-Claude Ngongo have regained their freedom. And we urge you to bear in mind during this challenging period for your nation that free expression is the indispensable first principle of democratic government — never more so than when it is irritating to the powers that be.
Respectfully yours,
Kevin McDermott Norman A. Schorr
Co-chairmen – Freedom of the Press Committee
cc: Faida Maramuke Mitifu
Ambassador of the D.R. of Congo to the U.S.A.
Embassy of the Democratic Republic of Congo
1800 New Hampshire Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009
Fax: (202) 234-2609
Ambassador Ileka Atoki
Permanent Representative
Permanent Mission of the Democratic Republic of Congo
to the United Nations
866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 511
New York, NY 10017
Fax: (212) 319-8232
Aubrey Hooks
U.S. Ambassador to the D.R. of Congo
Embassy of the United States of America
4998 Ave. Lukusa, Kin-Gombe
Kinshasa
Congo
Fax: (011.243.81) 301-0531