RIGHTS-D.R. CONGO: One Year On, Things Don’t Look Too Good

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kenneth Blackman

KINSHASA, May 13 1998 (IPS) - Bingo! The host of officials behind the scanner at the Njili International Airport here have found something suspect in the departing passenger’s suitcase: newspapers!

“Local newspapers are not allowed out of the country, sir,” a customs official explains as a young, grim-faced plain-clothes operative goes through the suitcase inch by inch, separating the Congolese periodicals from the foreign ones. He spots two envelopes (A-4 size). Each is lifted to the light. They pass the inspection.

Then, it’s the turn of a pouch containing a tape recorder, cassettes — some containing interviews — and a notebook. Plain- clothes men instruct this IPS reporter, to play the tapes, but another operative also in civvies comes up and reminds him that it’s the customs official, not he, who should search the luggage. He backs off, the interviews are safe and so is the notebook.

But not the newspapers! The chief of the plain-clothes squad explains that “we are under strict orders not to allow any local newspapers out.”

IPS tries to limit the damage by asking for the paper carrying a transcript of a speech by the Central Bank governor, and the one with a column written by the advisor to the Minister of Communications.

The group retires a little way off to examine the papers. The one with the column passes muster immediately. The other with the speech is perused for a good 10 minutes, during which everyone slaps at the host of mosquitoes — migrants from a nearby swamp — that have taken up residence at the Njili International Airport. Finally, that paper, too, is allowed to travel out of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

It is not by chance that the regime of DRC President Laurent Kabila is unwilling to allow local periodicals to leave the country. It has given the newspapers — of which there are about 100 in the DRC, although only about 30 are published regularly — quite a lot to write about on the human rights front.

Over the year that has followed the ouster of late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko by Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation (AFDL) of Congo-Zaire on May 17 1997, journalists have been beaten by the security forces, while others have been arrested. Opposition politicians have been hauled before the courts, including some now being tried by a military tribunal.

Politician Etienne Tshisekedi, who spearheaded the political resistance to Mobutu up to the latter’s overthrow, has been banished to his village. The president and vice-president of the Ligue des Electeurs (League of Electors), a civic organisation, have been detained. The executive boards of the Federation of Congolese Enterprises (FEC) and the Zairean Human Rights Association (AZADHO) have been disbanded.

Reacting to the move against AZADHO, the Comite Droits de l’Homme Maintenant (Human Rights Now Committee) recalled in an Apr. 4 communique that it “comes after the suspension of the activities of political parties, the arrest and relegation of many political leaders and newspaper publishers, as well as many acts of intimidation”.

The committee, an umbrella of human rights groups including the AZADHO, added that it “considers this decision … as an expression of the deliberate will of the AFDL government to establish a new dictatorship in the Republic of Congo.”

In April, there was wide coverage by the local and international media of a dispute between the AFDL government and the United Nations over charges by the latter that the Kinshasa authorities had made life difficult for a UN commission investigating massacres allegedly committed in the east of the DRC.

Then, in early May, the Kabila government begged for more bad press by detaining an official of Human Rights Watch, a U.S.-based non-governmental organisation (NGO). According to media reports, the official, Suleiman Ali Baldo, was leaving the country on May 8 after a three-week visit when he was detained at the Njili airport and his documents seized. He was, however, allowed to leave the DRC on May 9 after being questioned by the security forces.

Analysts here are worried by the recent trends in the Central African country.

“It’s as if we’ve moved backward where individual and collective freedoms are concerned,” says Kenge Mukengeshayi, editor-in-chief of the independent ‘Le Phare’ daily. “We fought the Mobutu dictatorship and during that time we (progressively) gained ground in the area of freedoms, but we have the impression that all that has been called into question.”

Not that there have not been improvements. Most observers say there is less crime — both white-collar and common — and, generally, people circulate freely in Kinshasa at just about any time of day or night. Before the AFDL took over, they lived in fear of the then Armed Forces of Zaire, who extorted money from passers-by even in broad daylight, Kinshasa residents told IPS.

“During the Mobutu period you couldn’t walk around with your bag,” unemployed computer operator Papy Makwanza tells IPS. “Security agents would have followed the taxi you took from the airport and held you to ransom.”

“Today I can walk around with money in my pocket,” he adds. “There has been a big change since the AFDL arrived. I give the government 9 out of 10 where security is concerned.”

But this does not apply on all fronts. There have been reports of people abducted on the orders of the state and, in the east (near the border with Rwanda and Burundi), government forces have been fighting the Mai Mai. These are rebels waging what is seen here as an ethnic war targetting the DRC’s Tutsi minority.

Mukengeshayi agrees that, generally, people are safer now in Kinshasa. Still, he maintains, there is a great deal of unease at the way the government has been treating its critics.

“There is a sort of frustration,” he tells IPS.

“People are saying: ‘But Mobutu did not do that. He was the biggest dictator, but he tolerated the human rights organisations. How come the liberation movement does not manage to tolerate the same exercise of individual and collective freedoms’,” adds Mukengeshayi, who was detained for three months in 1993 by the Mobutu regime.

“We cannot be against the new regime,” he says. “On the contrary we cannot regret the end of the Mobutu era since what happened for 30 – 32 years to the vast wealth of the country was a mess.

“But what the people want is guidance — for the government to say: ‘This is what we inherited. This is what we propose, and this is the direction we want to go in.”

Thus far, he argues, this has not been done.

In the meantime, Congolese are waiting to see whether their leader will stick to the timetable he himself has set, which should culminate in elections in April 1999, or whether the transition to democracy will be aborted as in Nigeria.

In that West African country, presidential polls originally scheduled for October are being replaced by a referendum to determine whether Nigerians want Gen. Sani Abacha to remain in power or not.

So far, the signs are not all that encouraging, not just because of the political climate, but also from a logistical point of view.

The first draft of the new constitution under which the election is to be held, has been worked out by a committee and submitted to the government. The next step is the formation of a constituent assembly, which will then hammer out the second draft.

If the assembly is an elected one, approving the draft constitution will be its work. If it is designated, the draft’s fate will be decided by a referendum, which will not be easy to organise in Africa’s third largest country (in terms of land size), which has enormous communications problems.

All this has to be done by November, according to the transition timetable set by the AFDL government. That’s just six months away.