SECURITY AGENTS DETAIN TWO JOURNALISTS

Two journalists working for the Kinshasa satirical journal "Pot Pouri"
have been apprehended by the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC)
security agents. The paper's editorial staff reported that both the
director Achille Ekele Ngolnya and the editor Guy Kassongo Kilmbwe
disappeared on June 15 this year. Their detention was suggested to be
connected to the paper's denunciation of the misappropriation of a
piece of machinery officially presented to the head of state.
According to the paper, the tractor which was recently presented to
President Laurent Kabila, along with a batch of agricultural
equipment acquired by the DRC for its battered farming economy, had
allegedly been spirited away to a Kinshasa warehouse. The paper
reported that the editorial deplored the practices used by the powers
that be to prevent journalists from doing their job and denounced the
illegal detention of these journalists.

ENDS