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DRC: Kinshasa daily protests at editor's arrest

NAIROBI, 19 June (IRIN) - The editor-in-chief of the pro-government 'Avenir' newspaper, Joachim Diana Gikupa, was arrested last week by the Agence nationale de renseignement (ANR) security service in the DRC capital, Kinshasa, AFP reported on Monday. The newspaper, which did not elaborate on the journalist's work, condemned the action and said it had launched an official complaint against the ANR, the report added. "If an editor-in-chief of an important daily needs to be interrogated for several days in a dungeon over a civil affair, then what use are the courts in this country?" AFP quoted an 'Avenir' editorial as saying on Monday. Journalists are arbitrarily rounded up in the DRC, despite promises by President Joseph Kabila to improve the country's human rights record.

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