Text Victoria Hita
Three arrests in the last two years. For the first, publicly asking for free primary education, he served three and a half weeks in prison; the second was to show on television the real meaning of March 8, beyond the festive nature; and for the third, to demand compliance with children’s rights in his country, he spent four days in the police station. The Congolese journalist, Sylvie Luzala, says that the worst feeling she has from all this is “humiliation”.
The Solidarity Journalism Group of the College of Journalists of Catalonia met this week at the Barcelona headquarters with Luzala, a specialist in investigative journalism on violence, sexual harassment and prostitution in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The meeting was attended by a dozen journalists and members of the Catalan Association for Peace, an organization that hosts the journalist until the month of August.
Sylvie Luzala explained that in her country “the media does not talk about women” and “what is seen and what is said is very difficult in a place where democracy is only formal”. Apart from the arrests, this professional and her family have received anonymous threats and phone calls that “create tensions and psychological problems that extend beyond the family nucleus”, as they involve rejection from the community. Luzala has denounced that “the media are at the service of companies and create news to go against media groups”, a fact that, according to the people attending the debate, is not exclusive to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Just as neither is the situation of women: the struggle to be recognized in society with the same rights as a man. “My country is the world capital of violence against women in the family, military and institutional spheres”. An example is in the electoral lists of political parties, where women do not appear when they are the ones promoting projects and struggles to defend universal human rights. The differentiating element of injustice compared to other countries is the religious conviction of society, which makes it difficult to recognize women.
“Children of the Devil”
Sylvie Luzala chairs the Board of Directors of the Étoile du Sud association, a defender of women’s and children’s rights in the context of a country at war for more than twenty-five years. In this sense, he considers that “sexual violence is a weapon of war, since the women who are victims of this violence when they become pregnant experience rejection, the religious condition prevents them from having an abortion and the creatures become children of the devil”, is in other words, in street children, and they are also captured by armed groups turning them into child soldiers. The journalist complains that neither the Ministry of the Interior nor the Ministry of Defense have statistics on child soldiers and laments the “international complicity in the existence of at least 200 armed groups in the country”. He recalled that “in the twenty-seven years of war, each of the three presidents has formed his army and now we find a proliferation of weapons and youth gangs financed by surrounding countries”. Despite acknowledging that the country has been improving during the transition it is experiencing towards democracy, “change does not happen overnight: the first measures that need to be addressed are to eliminate hidden prisons and make women visible” .
Sylvie Luzala, journalist, activist and mother, points out that her stay in Barcelona is helping her to reflect on the risks of the profession from a distance, to take more precautions when she returns and to be more aware of the dangers of her work.
Solidarity Journalism working group
In addition to this breakfast with the Congolese journalist and the meeting with three Mexican journalists welcomed in the city thanks to the municipal program “Barcelona welcomes journalists from Mexico”, the group has started a cycle of debates on “Forgotten conflicts”, the first of which took place last March on the current situation in Nicaragua. The second debate will take place in June on the increase in disinformation in Peru and the repression of journalists.
Next May 17, in the conference hall of the College of Journalists, the investigation and documentary made by two Mexican journalists on “the footprint of fentanyl in Catalonia” will be presented, an investigation that deals with the drug cartels of Mexico in alliance with the Chinese mafia.
Sylvie Luzala, flanked by members of the Solidarity Journalism Group of the College of Journalists and the Catalan Association for Peace
