Congo’s national prosecutor orders crackdown on homosexuality
He demands ‘repression’ although the nation has no law against same-sex intimacy.
Firmin Mvonde Mambu, the Public Prosecutor of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has ordered regional prosecutors to initiate proceedings “against the perpetrators of deviant practices of a sexual and homosexual nature, as well as the perpetrators of noise pollution”.
An illegal decision
The order targeting LGBT people and those who disturb the peace was issued on June 19, four days after the DRC’s new Minister of Justice, Constant Mutamba, sent a letter to Mvonde, urging public prosecutors to prosecute homosexuals even though the country has no anti-gay law. Consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex are not a crime under current law in the DRC.
In his letter, the public prosecutor demands “repression” that he hopes will be “responsible” and “methodical” in order to defuse any “resistance”. He refers to LGBT+ people indirectly in terms of “social phenomena”.
Officially, the aim of his order is to achieve “quietude” for the Congolese population by means of “awareness-raising campaigns”, but the actual goal of targeting both homosexuals and perpetrators of night-time disturbances is clear.
The concern of human rights defenders
Rebecca (a pseudonym for her safety), an observer of public life in the DRC, points out: “It is of course LGBT+ people who are in Constant Mutamba’s sights, and this latest blow comes after he had already proposed a law to criminalize homosexuality in the DRC when he was a member of parliament two months ago.”
Mutamba had introduced a bill to condemn homosexuality to penalties of up to 15 years of “penal servitude” and 15 million Congolese francs in fines (between US $2,600 and $5,300), in a country where the average monthly salary is estimated at $49.
Rebecca adds, “The use of extra-legal repression, as well as the premeditated use and mobilization of all state resources, suggest the intention to cause suffering or worse.”
She has helped publicize what Mutamba and Mvonde are doing. “It is to prevent any attempt at concealment with regard to probable future harm to the LGBT+ community that we are leaking certain documents, so that international civil society knows what is being prepared in the Congo (DRC), should we disappear tomorrow.”
