Democratic Republic of Congo London embassy staff resign and claim asylum
Three staff members of the Congolese embassy in London resigned from their posts, ‘issu[ing] a lengthy statement denouncing their government’, and claiming asylum in the UK. First Secretary B. Kazadi Moussonzo, First Secretary M. Yaya Efunga and Second Secretary S. Kabengele Mamba, who have a collective 14 years of service, stated: ‘Our dream of a lawful state in DRC vanished with what is in effect a coup d’état. (…) We are breaking our duty of confidentiality to join voices of protesters against not just recent but a whole series of events. (…) Therefore we have decided to: stop working under President Kabila … [and] become conscientious objectors, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in preamble to the UN Charter of 1945 and the DRC Constitution’.
The statement makes reference to a series of events which ‘demonstrate a systematic policy put in place by President [Joseph] Kabila’s regime to retain power by force’, culminating in the 28 November 2011 elections, when Kabila was re-elected in a flawed electoral process whose results ‘lack[ed] credibility’, according to observers from the Carter Center. It accuses the government of criminal acts in violation of the constitution and laws of the republic, of which ‘the Head of State should be the guarantor’, and cites incidents such as the January 2007 ‘massacre’ of Bundu dia Congo members by the state police, following a ‘political order’, as well as the ‘incarceration and detention’ of Kabila’s political opponents.
