DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Funeral is held for UN journalist shot in DRC raising questions on free speech

Record ID: 455684

  • Title: DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Funeral is held for UN journalist shot in DRC raising questions on free speech
  • Date: 25th June 2007
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF JOURNALISTS BACK AT WORK AT THE RADIO OKAPI AFTER THE CEREMONY
  • Embargoed: 10th July 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Obituaries
  • Reuters ID: LVADWQUGYEJTS16XERC53PTTGLHZ
  • Story Text: The funeral for a United Nations journalist who was shot in the Democratic Republic of Congo's troubled eastern city of Bukavu was held on Friday (June 15).
    Serge Maheshe was walking from a friend's house to a UN vehicle late on Wednesday (June 13) when he was approached by two men dressed in civilian clothes who forced the 31-year-old to sit down.
    They asked his name and then fired several shots into his legs and chest. Several others also stopped by the gunmen were left unharmed and Maheshe was not robbed, UN officials said.
    Maheshe, a respected journalist who had worked at the United Nations-sponsored Radio Okapi since its launch in 2002, had received death threats before.
    The motive for the killing was not clear, though UN officials said on Friday they still did not know if he was killed because of his work as a journalist, but added that Maheshe had in the past been involved in a dispute with members of the military.
    Maheshe's family was invited to attend a ceremony to honour Masheshe at the UN headquarters in Kinshasa on Monday (June 18).
    Maheshe's colleagues, journalists from foreign publications, UN officials and diplomats were part of the 600 who came to remember the journalist.
    "Serge died holding the microphone in his hand on the battlefield, to give true and fair information to the Congolese people," said radio Okapi's deputy news editor, Pellet Kipela Dondo.
    Maheshe was the local head of Radio Okapi, a nationwide radio network set up to aid the peace process in Congo following a 1998-2003 civil war.
    Threats and intimidation against journalists are common in Congo, which last year held its first free elections in more than four decades.
    Several reporters have been murdered in Congo in recent years. Franck Ngyke, political editor of "La Reference Plus" newspaper, and his wife were shot dead in Kinshasa in 2005 and freelance journalist Bapuwa Mwamba was gunned down at his home in the capital last year after denouncing police intimidation.
    The international press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders, classifies Congo as a "difficult situation" country.
    Representatives from the local 'Journalists in Danger' NGO, which aims to give support and protection to journalists working in the country, were also present at the ceremony.
    "In all the killings done in this city, if I take the journalist murders, we had military and police officers among the bandits who committed these crimes," said Dona Mbaya, president of the NGO.
    Police have arrested two soldiers suspected of killing Maheshe, a senior police officer said on the day of Maheshe's funeral.
    "The situation is really complex in North and South Kivu, we should get together to find some solutions and make commitments on the justice front. The government has just decided to recruit 500 magistrates to find all these criminals, the people who commit executions and other crimes," Tshikez Diemu, the country's Defence Minister, said after the ceremony.
    Maheshe was the third journalist murdered in the former Belgian colony since 2005.
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