(New York, April 2, 1998)--As President Clinton today recognizes the efforts of civil society in Africa, civil society activists in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are facing new attacks from their government. Human Rights Watch charged today that the Congolese authorities are cracking down on a range of independent voices -- including journalists, academics, development experts, and in particular human rights defenders -- in order to silence criticism of their increasingly repressive policies.
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The most recent attack on leaders of civil society in the DRC took place on the night of March 20-21, when four soldiers accompanied by a civilian forced their way into the Kinshasa home of Floribert Chebeya, president of the Voice of the Voiceless, one of the leading human rights organizations in the country. The five attackers tied him up and took him at gun point to a vacant lot where he was beaten severely with a rifle butt and kicked repeatedly. After threatening to kill him, the attackers left with money and valuables from his home. Mr. Chebeya, who is a former winner of the Reebok Human Rights Award and internationally recognized for his organization's courageous efforts to defend human rights in the Congo under Mobutu, lodged an official complaint with the police, but the DRC government has failed to open an investigation.
The attack on the Voice of the Voiceless is indicative of increasing government attempts to stifle independent voices. In early March, Pascal Kambale, the vice-president of the Association for the Defense of Human Rights (AZADHO), was summoned to the National Security Council, and questioned about the sources of an AZADHO report on a civilian massacre perpetrated by government soldiers in mid-February 1998 in the eastern town of Butembo. On March 13, the same day that a government conference on human rights in Kinshasa released a declaration about the importance of human rights in national reconstruction, agents of the national intelligence agency confiscated hundreds of copies of AZADHO's annual report about human rights in the DRC.
Attacks on the independent press and others who have written about human rights abuses have been a key feature of the government's campaign against civil society. Among the many such incidents, in late March customs authorities at Kinshasa airport seized some 2,000 copies of the international edition of Le Soft newspaper. This was the second edition of that paper to be seized in March, and the fifth in eight months. In February, authorities detained the editor of Le Potentiel for three days for articles published in his paper denouncing the arrest and banishment of opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi. Roger Sala Nzo, secretary-general of the National Human Rights Center was arrested in Kinshasa on November 23, 1997 and detained for three months as punishment for the publication of a report critical of rampant human rights abuses under the current government.
Human rights organizations have been a frequent target of the Kabila government. For example, Didi Mwati Bulambo, general coordinator of the Collectif d'Action pour le Development des Droits de l'Homme (Collective of Actions for Human Rights Development), was arrested and tortured by the army in August 1997 in his native Mwenge district of South Kivu as punishment for his human rights activism. At about the same time, Bertin Lukanda of the rights group Haki Za Binadamu, Swahili for "human rights organization," was arrested and tortured by army soldiers in the eastern town of Kindu. His tormentors accused him of spying for the United Nation's investigation into reports of refugee massacres in eastern DRC.
Human Rights Watch believes that the DRC government targets Mr. Chebeya and other advocates to prevent them from defending and promoting human rights in their country. We call on the DRC government to immediately cease attacks on civil society and to conduct a thorough and independent investigation into these and similar incidents to identify and punish those responsible for arbitrary detaining, beating and harassing civil society leaders and rights defenders.
Human Rights Watch calls on the U.S. government give visible, high-profile support to efforts by organizations of civil society to promote human rights standards and monitor their governments' compliance. The U.S. should also speak out publicly against governmental actions that encroach upon the ability of these groups to operate freely.
