Human rights advocate urges DR Congo authorities to free journalist
Kinshasa, DR Congo (PANA) – Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Friday urged the authorities of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) to "immediately and unconditionally" release journalist Stanis Bujakera, and drop the charges against him.
The human rights watchdog said in a statement on its website that the journalist has been detained since 8 September, 2023, in police custody and later at Kinshasa’s Makala central prison.
The authorities charged Bujakera with fabricating and distributing a fake intelligence memo saying that DR Congo military intelligence had killed a senior opposition official, Chérubin Okende. The two-page memo informed an article published in Jeune Afrique, which Bujakera did not author.
A Kinshasa court is expected on Friday to decide whether to appoint new experts to authenticate the memo, the statement said.
“Nearly five months since the Congolese authorities detained Stanis Bujakera, the case increasingly appears politically motivated and part of a crackdown on the media,” said Thomas Fessy, senior Congo researcher at HRW. “The authorities should immediately drop all charges against Bujakera, release him, and ensure that journalists can do their work without fear of arrest or judicial harassment.”
Bujakera, 33, is deputy director of the Congolese online news outlet Actualite.cd. He is also a reporter for Jeune Afrique, and the international news agency Reuters. He is the country’s most followed journalist on social media.
HRW said Police arresed him on 8 September at Kinshasa’s Ndjili airport as he waited to board a flight. Initially kept in police custody, he was then transferred to prison on September 14 after being charged with “spreading false information”, “forgery and the use of forged documents”, and “distributing false documents”. He could face up to 10 years in prison, according to his lawyers.
The Congolese authorities claim the intelligence memo in question is a fake document, and accused Bujakera of having shared it from his messaging applications. The memo was presented as a leaked document in the Jeune Afrique article. Bujakera was subsequently accused of having fabricated the memo and forged the signature and the National Intelligence Agency’s seal. The prosecution has so far been unable to back up these allegations in court, and the expert tasked with authenticating the memo resigned in January, citing equipment issues.
In November, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) published the findings from its investigation, which concluded the memo was authentic “even though [it] cannot pass a judgment on the veracity of its content”. A few weeks later, the investigative Congo Hold-Up media consortium’s investigation exposed serious inconsistencies in the prosecution’s claims. They had claimed that Bujakera received the memo through a Telegram account and was the first person to share it on WhatsApp. The media consortium reported that both social media companies, however, confirmed to them that it was not possible to trace the original sender of a message and that it was therefore impossible to reach such a conclusion, from a technical perspective.
On January 12, during the last court hearing, it was also revealed that the signatures presented by the National Intelligence Agency and the prosecution were different, further weakening the prosecution’s argument in trying to prove the memo was forged.
-0- PANA MA 2 Feb2024
