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Threats Against Human Rights Defenders

• Two leading members of Journaliste En Danger (JED), a Congolese organization campaigning for free speech, received death threats in January 2006, when they published the results of an investigation into the murder of Ngyke and Mpaka.¹⁰ On May 20, 2006, JED received another death threat by email. It said:

You people from JED have the opportunity to choose the coffin you like. You have chosen. Your time has come. We know your hiding places. This time we will get you. We will rape you with your women and children, even babies. As soon as it rains, that will be the sign. We know your homes and all the schools. You have no way out any more.¹¹

• Hubert Tshiswaka, director of the Katanga-based Action Against Impunity and for Human Rights (ACIDH), received a telephoned death threat and fled the country in April 2006 after ACIDH criticized the creation of militias by political parties, particularly the Union of Congolese Nationalists and Federalists (UNAFEC), a political movement close to President Kabila and composed primarily of members of the Balubakat ethnic group. After Tshiswaka criticized UNAFEC, its party leaders and a newspaper close to them described Tshiswaka as tribalist and accused him of inciting ethnic hatred. Tshiswaka is from Kasaï, and in the past there has been ethnic hostility between the Balubakat of Katanga and Kasaïans.

• Jean-Pierre Muteba, a trade unionist, and Jean-Claude Katende, president of the Katanga branch of the African Association for the Defence of Human Rights (ASADHO), received telephoned death threats after a nongovernmental umbrella organization with which they are affiliated, the Natural Resource Network, published an April 19, 2006 statement denouncing corruption, unfair contracts, child labor and other malpractices in the resource sector.¹²  The network also published a copy of a letter from a high-ranking member of President Kabila’s political party in Katanga listing individuals who had bankrolled the party and requesting appropriate thanks for their support.  The list included a number of well-known businessmen.

• Human rights defenders Richard Bayunda and Sheldon Hangi, who had fled death threats in early 2005 after criticizing human rights abuses and arms distribution in North Kivu, had just returned home to Goma in North Kivu when they were again threatened by telephone calls in January and February 2006. Unidentified armed men also came to their homes at night but were unable to gain entry.¹³

The bungled trial in the case of murdered activist Pascal Kabungulu

In one of the rare cases where justice has been pursued for an attack against a human rights defender, the prosecution has been poorly handled. Pascale Kabungulu Kibembi, the widely-respected executive secretary of Héritiers de la Justice, was murdered in his Bukavu (South Kivu) home by three armed men in the early hours of July 31, 2005.¹⁴ Héritiers de la Justice had documented grave human rights abuses, including war crimes, by soldiers of the Congolese armed forces and others.

Didace Kaningini, acting governor of South Kivu, established a commission of inquiry into the murder, but its members—judicial and political authorities with competing agendas—concluded only that they could not act in the case.¹⁵ After its inadequate performance, the commission further lost credibility when Kaningini was accused of fabricating evidence to incriminate staff at Héritiers de la Justice and was himself briefly detained.¹⁶

The Bukavu military prosecutor arrested several former soldiers of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie-Goma (RCD-Goma), the Rwandan-backed armed group that controlled large parts of eastern Congo during the 1998-2002 war. Local senior army commanders, led by former RCD-Goma commander Col. Thierry Ilunga, intervened to have two of the suspects freed, but they were later re-arrested¹⁷ and brought to trial in late November 2005, after considerable pressure from Congolese and international human rights organizations. During the trial, the military prosecutor accused Colonel Ilunga of ordering the assassination.  During testimony on December 12, 2005, Colonel Ilunga grabbed a gun from a soldier, threatened trial spectators, and tried to flee the courtroom. He was detained but released the next day. In late December 2005 the case was transferred to another military court that has the authority to try higher-ranking officers, but has made little progress since.¹⁸