A/HRC/10/58 page 11 33. While the Maheshe trial is the most emblematic recent example of the dangers facing journalists and human rights defenders, journalists have also been targeted in other actions by state agents. On 3 November 2007, a female journalist with Radio Okapi was briefly arrested and subjected to ill-treatment by Republican Guard soldiers in Kinshasa. The soldiers ordered her to lie down; one of them held her by her hair, kicked her and verbally abused her. 34. Events such as the above are not limited to Kinshasa. In Kasaï Oriental province, for instance, the UNJHRO has documented numerous cases of journalists who were threatened by PNC agents for their presumed collaboration with the UNJHRO. Two cases involved journalists who were arbitrarily arrested by the PNC after they had criticized the state security services, including the PNC. Another case concerned two journalists with Radio Okapi as well as one journalist from a local radio station who were threatened after they had made comments on air about sensitive issues such as the theft and embezzlement of state funds. 35. A similar pattern of repression exists with regard to human rights defenders. Whether activists operate locally or at the national level, authorities often react aggressively to their activities, carrying out arbitrary arrests or using disproportionate force. On 1 April 2008, an airplane transporting four members of a human rights NGO from Lubumbashi, Katanga to the site of a massacre was not authorized to take off by local authorities, thus preventing the members of the NGO from seeking additional evidence for use in a trial against the Anvil Mining company taking place in Australia. Human rights defenders are also targeted by the authorities in other areas. Here again, the situation in Kasaï Orientale stands out. One recent example is that of a local human rights defender who was arrested on 7 November 2008 by ANR agents in Bulongo, 280 kilometres from Kananga, after conducting a seminar on the rights of detainees. Neither his family nor the UNJHRO have been able to obtain information on his whereabouts. C. Sexual violence 36. Sexual violence remains widespread in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Far from being limited to the context of armed conflict, it occurs throughout the country, both as a result of unbalanced power relations between state agents and civilians, and within the civilian population itself. Despite the enactment of laws which provide for harsher punishments for crimes of sexual violence and the increased coverage given to sexual violence in eastern Congo by the international media, members of the FARDC, the PNC and armed groups make up a large proportion of the perpetrators. Few perpetrators of sexual violence are arrested, and many are subsequently released through the intervention of local authorities or by corrupt police officers. Victims’ families are often encouraged to engage in out-of-court settlements known as “arrangements à l’amiable”. In other cases, military and police commanders refuse to hand over subordinates to the military justice system. 37. On more than one occasion during the reporting period, PNC officers have committed acts of sexual violence during what could be described as punitive actions against civilians. This problem is recurrent in Equateur province, where several such incidents appear to have deliberately targeted the civilian population. One of these was the incident in Ngele village on 13 May 2008. Two PNC officers had severely beaten two young men for walking shirtless in public. In reaction, the population threw stones at the policemen, who in turn fired warning