Romão De Jesus

Gender: Male
Radio Journalist

The officers insulted and shoved Fernandes, a reporter with Radio Despertar, a broadcaster owned by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola opposition party, and De Jesus, a reporter for the privately owned Radio MFM, according to those sources. Authorities beat De Jesus with a baton on his back and grabbed Fernandes by his shirt collar and pushed him around, the journalists said. Fernandes said he wanted to interview people affected by the evictions and demolitions for his weekly radio program, “Repórter da Minha Banda” (Reporter of My Area/Angola) “When we arrived, the bulldozers were already destroying houses, and we started collecting testimonies from residents. After 10 minutes, we were surrounded by angry military officers, insulting us, yelling that we should not be there, demanding our recording equipment, intimidating us, being very aggressive,” the journalist told CPJ. One of the officers snatched Fernandes’ recorder from his hands, saying they had orders from their superiors to clear the area of everyone, including reporters, the journalist told CPJ. The recorder was only returned days later, following the intervention of the radio station administrator, who used his contacts in the military command to get it back, Fernandes said. “The residents were trying to tell the officers we were just journalists working, but they ignored it and kept insulting us, saying that no one had authorization to be on-site. Being surrounded by angry military men was a scary experience, we had to run out of there,” Fernandes said.

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