Five journalists arrested by the police in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been released after 12 hours of interrogation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The journalists were picked up on Friday after publishing articles about alleged misappropriation of rations for police cadets, their newspaper said.<\/p>\n
They have been allowed to leave and told to return on Monday with AfricaNews managing editor Achille Kadima, the police said in a statement on Saturday.<\/p>\n
“It is unbelievable and very disturbing that the police have arrested journalists who revealed that a police investigation was being conducted into alleged misappropriation,” said Arnaud Froger, head of Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) Africa desk.<\/p>\n
The journalists, Octave Mukendi, Bruce Landu, Roddy Bosakwa, Dan Luyila and Laurent Omba, “just did their job by informing the public that an investigation was under way”, Froger said.<\/p>\n
The journalists had been working at the offices of the tri-weekly newspaper overnight to finish the latest edition when they were arrested on the premises.<\/p>\n
The officers who took them did not show any documents, Kadima told the AFP news agency, adding that he had gone into hiding.<\/p>\n
Earlier, he had written a letter to the national police chief complaining that police had conducted a “roundup” of copies of AfricaNews from newsstands.<\/p>\n
Media clampdown
\nOn the front page of the current issue, the paper carried a story on an inquiry into misappropriation of police cadet rations.<\/p>\n
The detentions followed a series of prosecutions of journalists in the DRC, which is just two months away from tense elections to replace President Joseph Kabila.<\/p>\n
DRC ranks 154th out of 180 countries on the press freedoms index compiled by RSF.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, RSF also sounded the alarm over the case of reporter Sylvanie Kiaku, of the weekly La Percee, who has been detained for more than a week on charges of defamation, over two articles she wrote about redundancies at a local bank.<\/p>\n
This year, around 20 journalists have been harassed or arrested in the DRC, according to Joseph-Boucard Kasonga, president of the UNPC national press union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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