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PRESS RELEASE The body of M. Floribert Chebeya Bahizire, Executive Director of La Voix des Sans Voix (“The Voice of the Voiceless”, VSV), a human rights organization in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), found dead in highly suspicious conditions, was recovered Wednesday June 2 in Kinshasa, while his driver, M. Fidèle Bazana Edadi, is still missing. The reports of the police and the first reactions from the Congolese government have shown both the bad faith of a "deleterious" government and its determination to cover up its heinous crime at any cost. The least that can be said, at this juncture at the very least, is that we are faced in Kinshasa with a government that lacks credibility, and which we would be completely mistaken to dare to trust one way or the other. Faced with such an odious, and a totally unjustified and unjustifiable, crime, condemnations have, rightly so, gushed out of nearly everywhere in the world; and we must applaud this reaction by the national and international community, which in substance is calling for an exhaustive and transparent investigation that ought to be undertaken by the Congolese government. However, the government in Kinshasa has neither the credibility nor the will to conduct an independent, exhaustive, and transparent investigation, especially as it is now taking the measure of the scope of the odious crime that it has committed. If there is a real determination to help Congo and avoid that other crimes of the kind take place, it is, in the circumstances, an international investigation under the aegis of the United Nations and the African Union that is, neither more nor less, required. Indeed, it would be useful to recall, in this instance, the fact that, since 2007, for all the crimes and massacres that have been committed by the Congolese government and for which investigations were undertaken with the assistance of the MONUC, justice was done to neither the victims nor their families. It is also vital to consider here the fact that the murder of Floribert Chebeya and the disappearance of his driver, Fidèle Bazana, have been made possible only by the fact that, over the last three years in particular, we failed to firmly condemn the tortures, the rapes, and the summary executions to which thousands of Congolese men and women are continually subjected, merely because they refuse to identify themselves with a regime that oppresses them and drives them in misery and degeneration, and that they chose to speak out fully exercising the freedom of speech that the Constitution justly affords them. We should neither forget that, in September 2008, in the wake of an electoral masquerade that it had perpetrated and supported two years earlier, the international community bemused the people of Congo and their friends in the world by discontinuing the mandate of the special Rapporteur for human rights in the Congo, even though all other mandates were prolonged and that it then appeared clearly that the situation of human rights in Congo was bound to deteriorate considerably. Evidently, how would we have expected a completely different outcome than the current situation in the Congo by giving power, absolute power by the way, to people who had in no way shown that they had a just conception of power or an uplifting vision for their society? Therefore the international community must make amends and try and make up for the mistakes of the past by sending a strong message to the government in Kinshasa, getting it to clearly understand that enough it is enough. Otherwise, odious crimes, some more horrible than others, as the one we are deploring now, will continue to sweep the Congo. At the same time that the Rally for a New Society and I present all our deepest sympathy to the families of Floribert Chebeya and Fidèle Bazana, particularly to their beloved wives and their poor children who have been unnecessarily made orphans so early, which condolences are also offered to the people of the Congo as a whole, I call upon my compatriots, all Congolese men and women wherever they are, to mobilize themselves firmly so that the sacrifices of Floribert Chebeya and all his work in favor of human rights in Congo shall not have been in vain. Let me here make a request to all, Congolese men and women in particular, to meditate on this noteworthy thought that, in the wake of the Holocaust, Reverend Martin Niemoller passed on to us in 1945: First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one, left to speak up for me. Certainly, the Machiavellians in Kinshasa are betting on the progressive demobilization of the human mind with the passing of the time to contain the storm that they have initiated with the assassination of Floribert Chebeya. It therefore is important that the Congolese elite and all the people of good will around the world remain interested in this case so as to insure that it will not sink into oblivion as so many other crimes from which Congo has so much suffered in the course of its history. We must also seize this unfortunate opportunity to require the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. Their place is surely not in jail, but in the Congolese society and to the service of their country. They are not criminals. We call finally on the whole international community to treat as a pariah government, the government in Kinshasa, this government that has turned corruption and violence into a method of government. The international community should treat the government in Kinshasa as a pariah government, for as much and as long that it will not have gotten to the bottom of the murder of Floribert Chebeya and the disappearance of his driver, Fidèle Bazana, and that it will not have committed itself to respect fully the fundamental rights of the Congolese citizens, which rights are afforded them by the Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the very Constitution that establishes its own power as a government. At the dawn of the 21st century, no government that oppresses its people, that kills those whose security and life it should secure, those to whom it should ensure protection, happiness, and prosperity, no such government should deserve our consideration. Dr. Alafuele M. Kalala President/RNS
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