Twenty-five days of deprivation of liberty for Stanis Bujakera Tshialama, twenty-five days too many. Arrested on September 8, our correspondent has been in preventive detention since September 14 at the Kinshasa penitentiary and re-education center, better known as Makala prison.
Built in 1957 to house 1,500 inmates, this prison whose dilapidated buildings extend over 13 hectares between the communes of Makala and Selembao today has nearly 10,000 residents, most of whom are incarcerated in conditions of sub-standard overcrowding. human. Pavilion 8, dressed in the blue outfit with yellow stripes of the captives, Stanis Bujakera Tshialama is one of them.
What he is accused of – and which boils down to the fact that he refuses to provide the sources of an article signed by the editorial staff of Jeune Afrique, but that the Congolese authorities, for whom it is a “ fake news”, suspect him of having written: a perfectly Kafkaesque situation – only deserves prison in countries where the notions of freedom of the press and respect for the work of journalists are only illusions. It is to say it, and to repeat that the Congo of Félix Tshisekedi must deserve its term “democratic”, which Jeune Afrique launched, in collaboration with Actualité.cd and Reuters, the three media for which Stanis works, the “Free Stanis” campaign.
In this context, around forty videos, watched on Jeune Afrique ‘s X and Facebook accounts alone by more than a million visitors, were produced, in addition to press releases from human rights organizations and tweets. of support from personalities like the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Samantha Power, or the American actress Mia Farrow.
All these calls demand the immediate release of Stanis Bujakera Tshiamala, who “must be free to participate in the urgent task of deepening democracy in the DRC, but also in Africa,” explains Cameroonian historian and philosopher Achille Mbembe. The former French Secretary of State Rama Yade, the Burkinabè activist and rapper Smockey, the Ivorian journalist and writer Serge Bilé, the Congolese mathematician Jonathan Esole… All share this demand and agree with the opinion of the UN human rights expert Alioune Tine, for whom “ Stanis Bujakera’s only crime is his professionalism”, or even that of the novelist Calixthe Beyala, according to whom his detention is “a shame for all of Africa”.
Others directly challenge the Congolese government, such as the host and producer Claudy Siar – “We know, you know and we know that you know, that his place is not in prison” – and the Ghanaian investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who calls “to let President Tshisekedi know that we stand in solidarity with our friend”.
There are also many who believe that the imprisonment of the one whom the Ivorian essayist Elgas describes as “a scout” amounts to “depriving the half a million people who follow him of reliable information, at a time when disinformation is great », as laments Congolese activist Fred Bauma, of the Group of Experts on the Congo. His academic compatriots Richard Kapend and Poncia Nyembo are categorical: Stanis Bujakera Tshiamala is, on the DRC, one of the best sources of “reliable, verifiable and certified” information and his incarceration, less than three months before the presidential election , is worrying. “I tell him to hold on, prison does not kill the man,” insists Nigerien journalist Moussa Aksar, who has also been in detention, while his compatriot, the comedian Mamane,Young Africa : “Enough is enough now, we must free him !” »
CREDIT: Jeune Afrique
