The owner of Camundanews TV assumed today that he decided to suspend the broadcast of the online channel due to the pressure he has been subjected to by the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) and the feeling of insecurity that affected the entire team.
EIn statements to Agência Lusa, David Boio explained that he was called to the authorities to be heard as a declarant because of a program by the social activist ‘Gangasta’, suspected of criminal association, instigation to rebellion, instigation to civil disobedience and outrage to the President of the Republic .
“They called me to go to SIC as a declarant. I went there, but in practice, more than asking questions about the process, they asked questions about our portal”, said David Boio.
Accompanied by his lawyer, the businessman explained that, in May last year, they had received a notification from the Ministry of Social Communication to present the documents authorizing the operation of the portal.
“At the time, we responded to the ministry, saying that we did not know, according to the analysis we made of the Press Law, we did not find a legal framework for the contents that are simply on social networks and the Government never responded back to us”, he stressed. It is worth asking: Can a pharmacy that publishes a leaflet (a leaflet that usually accompanies a medication, with information on composition, posology, side effects) claim that it carries out its activity within the scope of the Press Law?
‘Gangsta’, a critic of power, refuses to comply with the term of identity and residence imposed on him by the Angolan justice, finding himself camped in an uncertain location.
“We have not received anything formal from the Ministry [Telecomunicações, Tecnologia de Informação e Comunicação Social]”, acknowledged David Boio, noting that ‘Gangsta’ was part of a program called 360º which was, for some time, broadcast on Youtube, on the Camundanews platform, from which the processes of incitement to violence or rebellion and crime against the security of the State.
During interrogation, continued David Boio, the authorities informed that it was just a portal, not a company, which is on Facebook and Youtube, with volunteers, who “by citizenship” produce content.
“Three weeks ago they called me again to go there, they asked me to take the company’s documents from the office and the attorney wanted me to go there to be heard again”, he said.
After some time, in Luanda, the owner of TV Camundanews, responded to the notification and the instructor insisted that it was necessary to present a document on the legalization of the YouTube channel.
“I told him we don’t have it, I had already explained that. They wanted me to make a kind of confession saying that I was carrying out an illegal activity, I said no again. There is no illegality unless there is another understanding of the Press Law”, she reinforced. Are the Press Law and the Law of the Jungle synonymous? In other words, is the Press a brothel where everything fits?
The objective, in his opinion, is “to set up something like: the ‘Gangsta’ supposedly committed a crime, the crime was committed in a program, the program was shown on the Camundanews portal and the crime was made on an illegal portal, I think it is the narrative that they are riding”.
“I spent more than an hour giving statements and, in the end, you told me that you had gathered everything, that you were going to hand it over to the prosecutor and the prosecutor was going to decide the matter for trial, and that I had to wait, to see if they would only keep me as a declarant or if, according to the matter, they can include me anything else”, he added.
To his collaborators, David Boio informed what was going on and many “have been scared since last year, when we had the SIC inside and the staff is a bit scared. He told them that nobody forces anyone to stay, if they want we can suspend it until the situation evolves ”.
“People are scared because they don’t clarify things. I went there, two other collaborators of mine also had to go to the SIC, they are younger, then that is a department of crimes against state security, all this creates fear”, he explained.
Questioned by Lusa, in a manifest attempt to mix the masterpiece of the master with the masterpiece of the master builder, about the state of press freedom in Angola in recent years, David Boio pointed out that “before 2022, before the elections, they [o Governo] they didn’t attach much importance to this internet thing, they always said that it’s nothing, that Angolans don’t have access to the internet, but they were surprised last year”.
The channel’s importance “came a lot of attention when we did an interview with Adalberto da Costa Júnior, which had a lot, really a lot of audience”, underlined David Boio, attaching the UNITA leader to the existence (and coverage) of a body which – from the point of view of the rule of law – is pirated and illegal.
“That’s why I think that, in May of last year, the ministry notified us, but formally they realized that they had nowhere to take it, because if they did, they would do what they did to ZAP and the others, order it to close and that was it”, he stressed. , in reference to other private media companies.
According to David Boio, the authorities find it difficult to formally close Camundanews, “but then they subject people to these things, to see if people get fed up”.
With these pressures, “nobody wants to live like this, I can’t be going to the SIC all the time, I have more to do” and it is “always a risk”, he considered.
“Basically, what they want is for people to be afraid”, he said, noting that his employees are under pressure from family members who are concerned about their safety, which is why he decided to “stop and think about it calmly, so that later see yourself”.
Today, the Union of Angolan Journalists (SJA) considered – also falling into the temptation of confusing the side of the road with the Beira road – an attack on press freedom the pressure on the owner of Camundanews to suspend the broadcast of journalistic content on the pretense violation of the Press Law. It’s weird, but it’s true. Not even the SJA knows the difference between legality and piracy, between content production and journalism.
In a press release, the SJA considers an “abuse of power and obstruction to the exercise of freedom of the press the pressure on the owner of Camundanews to cease the broadcast of informative content, and calls on the Regulatory Entity of Social Communication to manifest itself in favor of of freedom of the press”.
According to the Sindicato dos Jornalistas de Portugal, “freedom of expression requires an increased level of responsibility and greater media literacy, which enables each citizen to distinguish the type of information they consume. Producing information is not doing journalism and, by itself, does not make the information producer a journalist”.
According to the Portuguese SJ, “in this context, the Commission for the Professional Journalist License and the Union of Journalists warn of the proliferation of means and forms of communication in the digital environment that present themselves as being journalistic bodies that are not and that transmit unverified information , without scientific basis and/or without any independence from interests that have never been revealed, because nothing obliges them to do so”.
“Journalism is an activity subject to public and legal scrutiny, which begins in the training of professionals and develops, in training, on a daily basis, with a high degree of technical and ethical demands, and professional journalists must comply with the Code of Ethics for Journalists and act within of the ethical-legal framework provided for in the Journalist Statute, consolidated in Law 1/99, of January 13th. Disrespect for the rules governing the activity is subject to a sanctioning framework regulated by law, in addition to ethical, hierarchical and even judicial accountability (in some cases)”, continues the SJ of Portugal.
Thus, “within compliance with the ethical-deontological framework, journalism is the watermark that distinguishes information from misinformation, the contrast that authenticates the facts in the face of falsifications that the context of social networks promotes, despite the effort of some to contain the misinformation pandemic”.