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Police officers indicted for the
murder of prominent human rights
figure Floribert Chebeya attend
their trial. (AFP)
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Who killed Floribert Chebeya,
the president of the leading DRC human rights group La Voix des Sans Voix, and
his driver, Fidèle Bazana, in June 2010 in Kinshasa? A few runaway police
officers, according to the military tribunal that judged the case and issued
its sentences one year later. A few bad apples, who acted on their own, without
any order from their hierarchy.
Although four of the eight
indicted policemen were condemned to the
death penalty and one to life imprisonment for the murder of Floribert Chebeya,
the victims' widows were stunned by the verdict. Their lawyers were outraged.
Virtually no one in the DRC or the international community believed that
justice had been done.
Neither did Thierry Michel. A prize-winning
independent Belgian journalist and film producer, Michel has carried his camera
for decades all around the Democratic
Republic of Congo, exposing the megalomaniac and brutal regime of former
President Mobutu Sese Seko (who ruled from 1965 to 1997), filming the daily
life and struggles of the population, capturing the majesty of the Congo River,
and investigating corruption and oppression in the Katanga mines.
He has paid a price for his
doggedness: in 1993 he was arrested by thugs of the Mobutu dictatorship,
jailed, and expelled from the country. Many officials today continue to see his
passion for Congo as a threat to the web of corruption and arbitrary violence
that sustains the current regime. "I am regularly arrested and
interrogated by the police, the military, or the intelligence services,"
he told CPJ. "But I also know that as an international journalist I can do
things that would be too risky for local reporters."
His new documentary, "L'affaire Chebeya, un crime d'Etat?"
(The Chebeya affair: A state crime?) will not endear him to Joseph Kabila's
government, which had been expected to bring some democracy and respect
for human rights following elections in 2006. "In fact, Chebeya's murder
marked the end of the democratic hope raised by the 2006 elections,"
Michel said Thursday in Brussels.
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| Chebeya's wife and two children at his funeral. (AFP) |
Following investigations at the
crime scene and the court proceedings, interviewing the victims' widows and
their lawyers, Michel's cameras reconstruct what happened on June 1, 2010, when
Chebeya and his driver went to the Kinshasa police headquarters to meet with
General John Numbi, the chief police inspector, and disappeared. Chebeya's
bruised body was discovered the next day in his car in a staged position that
sordidly implied that he had died during sexual intercourse. Bazana's body was
never found.
The film records the many flaws
of the investigation, the disappearance of evidence, the failure to detain key
suspects and a cascade of false statements. But above all it exposes Congo's
"deep state" -- the murky interaction between the security services,
the police, and the judiciary that guaranteed the impunity of those that
ordered the crime. "Truth is at the bottom of the well," Thierry
Michel said. "The trial was a tragedy for the Congolese society but it was
also in a theatrical sense a comedy." By closing in on the indicted
policemen -- as well as on their superiors, who were summoned to the bar as
"renseignants" (witnesses not under oath) -- Michel's cameras reveal
their coarseness but also apparent indifference, as if they knew they would
eventually enjoy impunity.
Michel describes the attempts of
some Congolese officials to approach the truth, but he also sketches a heavy
atmosphere of raw manipulation and intimidation. "The camera can act as a
lie detector," he said. "And there have been many lies during this
trial, with probably the revelation of a state lie. The trial was locked from
the start to the extent that the main suspect, John Numbi, could not be
prosecuted because he was a three-star general, effectively shielding him from
the reach of military justice."
Chebeya - the name of whose human
rights group, La Voix des Sans Voix, means "The voice of the
voiceless" -- had been a resolute adversary of Mobutu. And he was a
constant thorn in the side of the Kabila dynasty --Laurent-Désiré Kabila ruled
from 1997 until his murder in 2001, when his son Joseph succeeded him --
investigating abuses, exposing massacres, and mobilizing people. Over the years
he became one of the most vocal and well-known human rights defenders in the
DRC. The killing of such a prominent figure could not be swept under the carpet
of total impunity that suffocates the country. As Michel's film makes clear,
the outraged reactions of DRC's civil society and of the international
community -- ambassadors, NGOs -- were instrumental in forcing the authorities
to hold a trial. Although the trial was deeply flawed and protected the alleged
sponsors, it was unprecedented. "Under Mobutu it would never have taken
place," Michel said. "Now there is vibrant civil society, critical
and inquisitive journalists. The Congolese society has matured."
Michel dedicates his film to four
slain DRC journalists: Serge
Maheshe, Franck Ngyke Kangundu, Bapwa Mwamba, and Didace Namujimbo.
"Now unfortunately I have to add two other names to the list: Patrick Kikuku
and Kambale
Musonia," he told CPJ. "The press is supposed to be the guardian
of the rule of law and in DRC it has paid a heavy price."
But "L'affaire Chebeya. Un
Crime d'Etat?" does not end on a note of desperation, because it
highlights the awakening of a Congolese civil society that refuses to be
intimidated and dares to speak truth to power. The film gets beyond the somber
depiction of an arbitrary and brutal state. It shows that the
"voiceless" who Chebeya had fought so much to defend are standing up.
The victims' widows, Annie Chebeya and Marie-Josée Bazana, the lawyers that
took up their husband's cases, the demonstrators in the streets of Kinshasa,
Christian communities, and a few crusading journalists have been using all the
interstices of Congo's deeply flawed justice system to seek the truth and
attain justice.
They are keeping a close watch on
the case, not only to prevent the convicted policemen from winning the appeal
that they have submitted in June 2011, but also to ensure that those convicts
who have fled the country - three of them were convicted in absentia -- are
arrested. They campaign for complete reform of the country's judiciary,
in order to stop the cycle of impunity that feeds violence against journalists
and human rights defenders.
The documentary has become a key
tool in this fight for justice. It is currently being shown in European cities,
where it serves as a basis for panel discussions on the state of human rights
in the DRC. In July, Michel will tour the Democratic Republic of Congo for
three weeks to hear the "voice of the voiceless" that Floribert
Chebeya vowed to protect and empower.
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CPJ Senior Adviser Jean-Paul Marthoz is a Belgian journalist and writer.
He is a foreign affairs columnist for Le Soir and journalism professor
at the Université catholique de Louvain.
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