Newspaper ordered shut down

A Kinshasa newspaper has been ordered to shut down after it published an article criticising the Zimbabwean army. Officially the newspaper ‘Libre Afrique’ was suspended because it had not notified the government of its address, but editor Freddy Loseke told IRIN this was “just a pretext”. The suspension order was announced at the weekend, shortly after the newspaper came out with an editorial criticising Zimbabwean troops - allies of the Kinshasa government - for spreading AIDS and failing to recapture any of the Congo’s territory, sources in Kinshasa told IRIN. An assistant to the officer handling Zimbabwe’s military PR in Congo, Major Makotori, said he had “heard about the story”. “We handed the matter to the ministry of information,” he said. However DRC Information Minister Kikaya Bin Karubi denied that he had acted under pressure from Zimbabwe. [For more details, see separate IRIN report of 14 May headlined “DRC: Editor to defy newspaper closure”]