There are 70 more to have been transferred this Sunday, January 5, from the capital Kinshasa to the highly secure prison of Angenga, in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), reported the Minister of the country’s Justice, Constant Mutamba. They are in addition to the 102 condemned to death who were already there.
The minister specifies that these people are aged 18 to 35 and are known locally to law enforcement. According to him, these were “urban bandits”, also called “Kulunas”, convicted of armed robbery. But according to Amnesty International, no evidence has been provided to demonstrate their guilt.
The objective of the DRC government? Contribute to the fight against urban gangs thanks to the resumption of death sentences, announced in March 2024.
Faced with the return of the death penalty, the divide
Congolese citizens welcome the return of this doctrine unevenly. Some approve of it. «We welcome this decision by the Minister, because it will help put an end to urban crimesays Fiston Kakule, resident of the city of Goma, in eastern DRC. To depart to 8 p.m., we can no longer move around freely, because we are afraid of coming across a Kuluna.”
Espoir Muhinuka, human rights activist in the country, calls for a step back and warns against probable unjust and/or arbitrary convictions. “The fight against urban gangs must go hand in hand with the fight against poverty, unemployment and social exclusion, which are often factors contributing to crime”he says.
For their part, human rights organizations are beginning to make their reactions heard. Sarah Jackson, Deputy Regional Director for East and Southern Africa at Amnesty International, strongly opposes the decision of the Congolese authorities. “The announcement of these prisoner transfers is dismayingshe protested. We fear that the authorities will imminently carry out mass executions in the absence of reliable information on the status of those sentenced to death.”
Its request to the DRC is clear: “President Félix Tshisekedi must immediately, publicly and unambiguously renounce any plans for execution in Angenga prison or elsewhere. Parliament must establish a moratorium on executions, pending the total abolition of the death penalty.”
If these death sentences are ultimately applied, it would be a decades-long step backwards for the DRC. While judicial executions were abolished there in 1981, they were reinstated in 2006. The last one took place in 2003.
Source: www.slate.fr
