UGANDAN POLICE BEAT JOURNALISTS COVERING OPPOSITION LEADER'S ARREST

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns attacks by Ugandan police against two journalists in separate incidents outside of police stations today.

Police officers beat freelance photographer Edward Echwalu as he was trying to cover the arrest of opposition leader Kizza Besigye at Kira Road Police Station in the capital, Kampala. Separately, police beat Anatoli Luswata, a reporter for the private weekly Eddobozi, outside Kampala's Central Police Station. Both journalists were trying to cover the arrest of Besigye, local journalists told CPJ, but it wasn't clear until later in the day which police station was holding him. Opposition supporters were taken into custody after demonstrations against police brutality in Kampala turned into clashes and one policeman died, according to wire reports.

Using batons and a rifle butt, four officers repeatedly beat Echwalu, a photographer for Reuters and the independent weekly Observer, around 4:40 p.m. outside Kira Road Police Station where Besigye was detained, he told CPJ. When Echwalu tried to explain to the police officers that he was covering the event, they started to beat him. "They did not want to see my ID. They didn't want to listen," Echwalu told CPJ. The beating continued until opposition parliamentary members arrived on the scene. Echwalu said he attempted to report the incident to the police station immediately afterwards, but police did not allow him to enter. Bruised on his right arm and shoulder, Echwalu went to Kampala Hospital for treatment, he said. Echwalu managed to take photographs of the four officers after the incident.

Police officers beat Luswata on his back with batons outside the gate of Kampala's Central Police Station, local journalists told CPJ. They said they suspect police attacked Luswata because he was the first to arrive at the scene and there were no other reporters to cover the incident.

"Covering opposition party issues is not a crime. Ugandan police must stop arbitrarily attacking journalists simply for doing their job," said CPJ East Africa Consultant Tom Rhodes. "Authorities must immediately identify the officers who carried out these attacks and take disciplinary measures."

Calls to police spokeswoman Judith Nabakooba went unanswered. According to CPJ research, police and security agents were responsible for at least 21 cases of physical attacks against journalists during the country's 2011 election year

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that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide.

IEBC GEARS UP FOR KENYA ELECTIONS

Claire Kinyua during preparations for the IEBC mock elections

in Kajiado North at Watakatifu Catholic Centre in Ngong, Nairobi

March 21, 2012. The Commission is laying ground for the next

General Election despite a row over the poll date.

ANTHONY OMUYA

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is laying ground for the next General Election despite a row over the poll date.

On Wednesday, the electoral body conducted a voter education exercise ahead of mock elections planned for Saturday in Kajiado North and Malindi even as it insisted the March 4, 2013 election date still stands unless Parliament or the courts decides otherwise.

Commissioner Albert Bwire, however, described the debate as healthy.

The mock elections are meant to test the six-ballot election and identify any challenges in terms of cost or logistics so as to find solutions before the actual polling.

Mr Bwire said ballot papers for the six elective positions will bear different colours to avoid confusion and ease voting.

He said the mock elections are meant to help identify gaps to be used as a learning point ahead of the General Election.

“For instance, we want to determine how long voting will take, speed of voting and the number of voters that could be handled in a polling centre. We want to sort out issues of logistical challenges” Mr Bwire said at Ngong Watakatifu Catholic Centre, Nairobi.

Mr Bwire said Kajiado North was chosen for the mock polls because it has both urban and rural voters and that the IEBC "wants to see how they vote".

Mr Bwire said IEBC targets 30,000 voters in Kajiado North to participate in the exercise.

The mock elections are to be held in 12 out of 18 wards in Kajiado North. Some 117 polling stations are to be used.

Mr Bwire said preparations for Kenyans in the Diaspora to vote in the next elections have been affected by government delay to put in place regulations for dual citizenship.

“The IEBC and the government are working on the issue,” Mr Bwire said.

On Saturday, the IEBC set March 4, 2013 as the date for the next elections, sparking opposition from those who want the polls held this year.

But Wednesday, Mr Bwire insisted the decision was arrived at after wide consultation and that it could be changed if Parliament sets a new date or court rules differently.

Announcing the date, IEBC chairman Issack Hassan said Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Kibaki had failed to agree on a date for the elections thus leaving the Commission with the option of determining the date.

Mr Hassan said the country needed to know the date of the elections to remove "uncertainty, anxiety and suspense surrounding this date".

He called on all Kenyans to be "understanding and support the Commission in delivering peaceful, free, and credible elections".

IEBC has since advertised for recruitment of new staff in various fields. The Commission seeks to recruit professionals in voter registration, voter education, political parties, ICT, finance, legal services, communications, human Resource, planning, monitoring and evaluation, procurement, document management and library science.

It will also employ constituency election coordinators for the 80 newly created constituencies.

Daily Nation 

BELGIAN JOURNALIST THIERRY MICHEL TAKES ON IMPUNITY IN DRC

By Jean-Paul Marthoz/CPJ Senior Adviser

Police officers indicted for the murder of prominent human rights

figure Floribert Chebeya attend their trial. (AFP)

Who killed Floribert Chebeya, the president of the leading DRC human rights group La Voix des Sans Voix, and his driver, Fidèle Bazana, in June 2010 in Kinshasa? A few runaway police officers, according to the military tribunal that judged the case and issued its sentences one year later. A few bad apples, who acted on their own, without any order from their hierarchy.

Although four of the eight indicted policemen were condemned to the death penalty and one to life imprisonment for the murder of Floribert Chebeya, the victims' widows were stunned by the verdict. Their lawyers were outraged. Virtually no one in the DRC or the international community believed that justice had been done.

Neither did Thierry Michel. A prize-winning independent Belgian journalist and film producer, Michel has carried his camera for decades all around the Democratic Republic of Congo, exposing the megalomaniac and brutal regime of former President Mobutu Sese Seko (who ruled from 1965 to 1997), filming the daily life and struggles of the population, capturing the majesty of the Congo River, and investigating corruption and oppression in the Katanga mines.

He has paid a price for his doggedness: in 1993 he was arrested by thugs of the Mobutu dictatorship, jailed, and expelled from the country. Many officials today continue to see his passion for Congo as a threat to the web of corruption and arbitrary violence that sustains the current regime. "I am regularly arrested and interrogated by the police, the military, or the intelligence services," he told CPJ. "But I also know that as an international journalist I can do things that would be too risky for local reporters."

His new documentary, "L'affaire Chebeya, un crime d'Etat?" (The Chebeya affair: A state crime?) will not endear him to Joseph Kabila's government,  which had been expected to bring some democracy and respect for human rights following elections in 2006. "In fact, Chebeya's murder marked the end of the democratic hope raised by the 2006 elections," Michel said Thursday in Brussels.

Chebeya's wife and two children at his funeral. (AFP)

Bottom of Form

Following investigations at the crime scene and the court proceedings, interviewing the victims' widows and their lawyers, Michel's cameras reconstruct what happened on June 1, 2010, when Chebeya and his driver went to the Kinshasa police headquarters to meet with General John Numbi, the chief police inspector, and disappeared. Chebeya's bruised body was discovered the next day in his car in a staged position that sordidly implied that he had died during sexual intercourse. Bazana's body was never found.

The film records the many flaws of the investigation, the disappearance of evidence, the failure to detain key suspects and a cascade of false statements. But above all it exposes Congo's "deep state" -- the murky interaction between the security services, the police, and the judiciary that guaranteed the impunity of those that ordered the crime. "Truth is at the bottom of the well," Thierry Michel said. "The trial was a tragedy for the Congolese society but it was also in a theatrical sense a comedy." By closing in on the indicted policemen -- as well as on their superiors, who were summoned to the bar as "renseignants" (witnesses not under oath) -- Michel's cameras reveal their coarseness but also apparent indifference, as if they knew they would eventually enjoy impunity.

Michel describes the attempts of some Congolese officials to approach the truth, but he also sketches a heavy atmosphere of raw manipulation and intimidation. "The camera can act as a lie detector," he said. "And there have been many lies during this trial, with probably the revelation of a state lie. The trial was locked from the start to the extent that the main suspect, John Numbi, could not be prosecuted because he was a three-star general, effectively shielding him from the reach of military justice."

Chebeya - the name of whose human rights group, La Voix des Sans Voix, means "The voice of the voiceless" -- had been a resolute adversary of Mobutu. And he was a constant thorn in the side of the Kabila dynasty --Laurent-Désiré Kabila ruled from 1997 until his murder in 2001, when his son Joseph succeeded him -- investigating abuses, exposing massacres, and mobilizing people. Over the years he became one of the most vocal and well-known human rights defenders in the DRC. The killing of such a prominent figure could not be swept under the carpet of total impunity that suffocates the country. As Michel's film makes clear, the outraged reactions of DRC's civil society and of the international community -- ambassadors, NGOs -- were instrumental in forcing the authorities to hold a trial. Although the trial was deeply flawed and protected the alleged sponsors, it was unprecedented. "Under Mobutu it would never have taken place," Michel said. "Now there is vibrant civil society, critical and inquisitive journalists. The Congolese society has matured."

Michel dedicates his film to four slain DRC journalists: Serge Maheshe, Franck Ngyke Kangundu, Bapwa Mwamba, and Didace Namujimbo. "Now unfortunately I have to add two other names to the list: Patrick Kikuku and Kambale Musonia," he told CPJ. "The press is supposed to be the guardian of the rule of law and in DRC it has paid a heavy price." 

But "L'affaire Chebeya. Un Crime d'Etat?" does not end on a note of desperation, because it highlights the awakening of a Congolese civil society that refuses to be intimidated and dares to speak truth to power. The film gets beyond the somber depiction of an arbitrary and brutal state. It shows that the "voiceless" who Chebeya had fought so much to defend are standing up. The victims' widows, Annie Chebeya and Marie-Josée Bazana, the lawyers that took up their husband's cases, the demonstrators in the streets of Kinshasa, Christian communities, and a few crusading journalists have been using all the interstices of Congo's deeply flawed justice system to seek the truth and attain justice.

They are keeping a close watch on the case, not only to prevent the convicted policemen from winning the appeal that they have submitted in June 2011, but also to ensure that those convicts who have fled the country - three of them were convicted in absentia -- are arrested.  They campaign for complete reform of the country's judiciary, in order to stop the cycle of impunity that feeds violence against journalists and human rights defenders.

The documentary has become a key tool in this fight for justice. It is currently being shown in European cities, where it serves as a basis for panel discussions on the state of human rights in the DRC. In July, Michel will tour the Democratic Republic of Congo for three weeks to hear the "voice of the voiceless" that Floribert Chebeya vowed to protect and empower. 

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CPJ Senior Adviser Jean-Paul Marthoz is a Belgian journalist and writer. He is a foreign affairs columnist for Le Soir and journalism professor at the Université catholique de Louvain. 

CPJ