According to industry reports, the Democratic Republic of the Congo recently banned the Al Jazeera satellite news network over its interview with the leader of the rebel group M23. However, no law in the DRC officially banned media from covering rebel groups.
There was no immediate comment from Al Jazeera, a pan-Arab satellite television news network based in Doha, Qatar.
According to Congolese government spokesperson Patrick Muyaya, authorities revoked the press credentials of Qatar’s broadcaster in Congo DRC, saying the network had interviewed the head of a “terror organisation without proper accreditation.”
Al Jazeera aired an interview with Bertrand Bisimwa, the head of the M23 rebel movement in the eastern Congo, on Wednesday. In the interview, Bisimwa blamed the government in the capital, Kinshasa, for violating an August ceasefire and claimed that M23 is waging an “existential war.”
M23 is reportedly active with around 100 armed groups in the mineral-rich area near the Congolese border with Rwanda. A decade ago, the group seized the border city of Goma and, in late 2021, captured broad swaths of territory in eastern Congo.
