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http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/491/maurice_namwira.jpgSome five years after the assassination of Pascal Kabungulu, formerly secretary general of DRC human rights group Héritiers de la Justice, Maurice Namwira, the organisation’s executive secretary, discusses activism, impunity from justice and Héritier’s work with Christian Aid with Emma Pomfret.

In a nation that has experienced three decades of brutal dictatorship, followed by almost 15 years of war, Christian Aid’s partner organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) live and work against a backdrop of poverty and a legacy of endemic corruption.

The recent armed death threat against Emmanuel Lubala Mugisho, president of leading Congolese human rights organisation Héritiers de la Justice, once again brings into sharp focus the enormous risks many take through their courageous work in the DRC.

The violent attack, the latest incident in a long-established trend of targeting human rights activists and journalists, happened just a week after the murder of Congolese civil liberties activist Floribert Chebeya, and less than five years since the murder of Héritier’s late secretary general, Pascal Kabungulu.

On 31 July 2005 Kabungulu was assassinated in his home in front of his family for his knowledge of illicit gold mining in Kamituga, South Kivu, for his help in exposing the use of rape as a weapon of war in eastern Congo, for his persistent defence of human rights and for his documentation of serious human rights abuses in the DRC. He shares the fate of a long line of human rights defenders and journalists who have been attacked as a result of their efforts to help build the rule of law and accountability in the DRC.

Indeed, Héritiers de la Justice has a long record of documenting human rights abuses. It denounced those committed by former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko when the country was Zaire, and later by former president Laurent Kabila and the current government, headed by Kabila's son, Joseph. It has also documented serious abuses committed by the armed groups which have terrorised eastern Congo since civil war broke out in 1998.

The film Héritiers de la Justice.
* Emma Pomfret is Christian Aid’s Africa editor.
* Interview conducted and transcribed by Emma Pomfret, with questions by Alex Free.
* Héritiers de la Justice is a longstanding partner of Christian Aid.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.

LINKS

[1] Héritiers de la Justice website: http://www.heritiersdelajustice.org
[2] Pascal Kabungulu, obituary in the Guardian, 24 August 2005, http://bit.ly/btfeBZ
[3] Letter to President Kabila, 7 September 2005, Re: Assassination of Pascal Kabungulu Kibembi, Executive Secretary Héritiers de la Justice (from AI, Christian Aid, HRW and Frontline Defenders), http://bit.ly/ajFj9F