Africa Human Rights Day on October 21 is a good reminder for Africans of the many challenges they face in demanding accountability for violations of their dignity and security by governments, rebel groups, and other actors on the continent.
Wisely, for 2010, the African Union chose to highlight the link between peace and the realization of human rights. On a continent that has had its share of the worst tragedies, including colonialism, apartheid, war, and genocide, the proposition that "Realizing human rights is a key to achieving sustainable peace" is well worth remembering.
However, realizing rights is an aspiration that Africa will find hard to accomplish unless it can change the persisting climate of hostility toward human rights defenders. African human rights advocates, lawyers, and journalists continue to face harassment, illegal detention, forced disappearance, and, in some cases, murder for their courageous work. To achieve peace and security, African governments should work toward justice, particularly in their treatment of human rights advocates.
The unlawful arrest and detention of two Kenyan defenders who were representing suspects in the July 11 Kampala bombing is a case in point. It has been weeks since Mr. Mbugua Mureithi, a Kenyan lawyer who represented several of the Kenyan suspects detained in Uganda, and Mr. Al-Amin Kimathi, a dynamic activist with the Nairobi-based Muslim Human Rights Foundation, were thrown in jail in Uganda alongside the suspects they had hoped to assist. Mr. Mureithi was released three days later, but Mr. Kimathi remains in prison. That Ugandan authorities have provided no concrete details about the charges against the two indicates that they may have been targeted because they dared to raise concerns about the suspects' rights.
The situation in the West African country of The Gambia is no better. On October 11, security forces arrested two prominent women's rights defenders who, for years, had been conducting an effective campaign against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and other harmful practices. Gambian authorities have in the past announced that they would not guarantee the safety of activists who campaign against FGM. Although the police later said that the arrests were for theft-related charges, local activists do not rule out the possibility that the defenders' campaign is connected to their predicament.
The suspicion is not without merit, given the country leadership's record in launching direct attacks on human rights defenders. Just last year, President Yaya Jammeh lashed out at rights defenders and their "collaborators" and even threatened them with death: "If you think that you can collaborate with so-called human rights defenders, and get away with it, you must be living in a dream world. I will kill you, and nothing will come out of it."
But that is not the only place human rights defenders have faced death. Indeed, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Floribert Chebeya, a highly principled activist in Kinshasa, was killed in June, a bitter reminder that our continent's leading lights are sacrificing their lives for the noble cause of fighting wrongdoing. Chebeya was the executive director of one of Congo's largest and most respected human rights organizations, the Voix des Sans Voix (Voice of the Voiceless), which regularly exposed abuses by the country's security services and government over many years.
Chebeya's body was found in his car on June 1, just hours after he had visited police headquarters in Kinshasa. There is ample evidence that he had been repeatedly threatened and intimidated by Congolese authorities as a result of his work. Months have gone by, yet the circumstances of Chebeya's death remain unclear and those responsible have yet to face justice.
A little more than a year before, in neighboring Burundi, the killing of Ernest Manirumva, a local anti-corruption activist, raised similar suspicions. In the early hours of April 9, 2009, unidentified assailants raided Manirumva's home and stabbed him to death. Police and colleagues told Human Rights Watch that files were strewn around his room and that it appeared documents had been taken from his house.
These circumstances, as well as the fact that Manirumva's work threatened the interests of corrupt officials and businesspeople who prey on Burundian society, buttressed the belief that his killing was intended to stop his activism. Again in this case, truth has been another casualty; and the Burundian authorities are yet to deliver justice for the deceased and his family, the human rights community, and Burundian society.
The tragedy of these cases, in addition to the horrific deaths of the activists, is that governments have often resisted calls for independent inquiries made by organizations like Human Rights Watch. Naturally, such resistance has been followed by some degree of cover-up or botched investigations, which entrench impunity and thwart the realization of rights and the achievement of a peaceful political culture.
Almost three decades after the adoption of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, human rights defenders remain under attack, when all they are doing is reminding governments of their promises. This year, the African Union would do well to remind its members of these commitments, which came from Africans themselves.
Aloys Habimana is deputy Africa director for Human Rights Watch; he is based in Nairobi, Kenya.
