Rights Defender, Head of Congo’s ‘Voice for the Voiceless,’ Silenced

Floribert Chebeya knew what he was up against. Since the late 1980s he had endured numerous detentions and physical harassment from Congolese security services; he had canceled planned demonstrations out of fear for the safety of those who followed his lead, and defied threats against his own life when the stakes of failing to advocate seemed too high. For years, Amnesty International followed Chebeya’s unfazed approach to promoting human rights in Congo, and when he was found dead on Wednesday, the organization lamented the “great loss for the human rights community.”

Chebeya was the president of one of Congo’s leading human rights organizations, Voice for the Voiceless (known by its French acronym VSV), and the executive secretary for a national network of human rights groups known as RENADHOC. He founded VSV in 1988 and within a few years rose to prominence, which, given his line of work, meant that he became a target for the Congolese government; a search through Amnesty’s archive of “urgent actions” turns up a slew of appeals on behalf of Chebeya dating back to the mid-1990s.

Chebeya was a strident advocate for people unlawfully detained, harassed, and intimidated by Congo’s notoriously abusive and opportunistic security forces. He documented abuses and filed complaints on behalf of marginalized populations in conflict-ridden parts of the country. He frequently spoke out about the unsolved mystery surrounding the 2001 assassination of Congo’s previous president, Laurent Kabila. Dozens of Kabila affiliates remain in prison after being found guilty in what was deemed an attempted coup, and they were sentenced to death in a sham trial.

The security service known as the Military Detection of Unpatriotic Activities kept close tabs on Chebeya’s activities, often summoning him for interrogations following the release of a VSV report or after a request for information about detainees or other vulnerable people.

More recently, Chebeya’s organization had taken on the issue of sexual violence and advocated for the protection for the survivors and against impunity for perpetrators. In a press release (pdf) dated March 4, 2010, VSV commemorated International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women by calling attention to the prevalence of sexual violence in Congo, and noting that state officials — specifically with agencies such as the national police, army, immigration police, and the national intelligence — often commit abuses against the very people they are charged with protecting. VSV didn’t hesitate to name names, on this occasion calling for the prosecution of a prominent political party figure and professor accused of raping two teenage girls.

The U.N. reacted to Chebeya’s death with a statement saying that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was “deeply shocked” by the news and stressed that the investigation called for by the Congolese government should be “thorough, transparent and independent, with full respect for due process and rule of law.” No doubt in light of the very challenges Chebeya confronted, Congolese rights groups urged the government to appoint "a mixed and unbiased commission,” which would include police, human rights activists, and members of the international community. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay paid tribute, noting that “[Chebeya] was described by his colleagues as a pure product of a rare generation of human rights activists to whom fraternity and solidarity with colleagues and closeness to victims meant more than anything else."

Floribert Chebeya was found dead in the back seat of his car in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa early Wednesday morning. The evening before, he had gone to police headquarters in response to a summons to meet with the inspector general of police, the powerful John Numbi. Hours later, Chebeya told his wife via text message that he was unable to meet with Numbi, and shortly thereafter stopped answering his phone. Fidèle Bazana Edadi, Chebeya’s driver and also a member of Voice for the Voiceless, was unreachable on Tuesday evening, and according to local rights groups, his body was found on Thursday morning in another part of the city. However, a representative of Voice for the Voiceless said today that Edadi's whereabouts are unknown. "We fear that he was shot dead and then people got rid of the body," he said.

Photo credit: Irene2005