Michel Kalemba. Prisoners sentenced to death are held alongside the rest of the prison population: there is no separation. They all experience the same awful conditions in prisons plagued by overcrowding. Take Makala prison as an example: officially, it has a capacity of 1,500 spaces. Nearly 9,000 people are being held there today, including some who have been sentenced to death. Many sleep on the floor. The health care provided is terrible, and medication is lacking. That is why the work done by NGOs in the country’s prisons is critical. For example, we have distributed food and medicine at the Makala prison for several years now as part of the “Fighting against abusive pre-trial detention” project with FIACAT. We had observed that the prisoners did not have enough to eat and did not have access to medicine.

Prisoners are generally very isolated. Incarceration often leads to abandonment by families, who do not have the means to pay to visit their relative in prison. Prisoners sentenced to death, even more so than other prisoners, are often incarcerated in isolated prisons because those are the ones with advanced security systems. The others date back to the colonial period and are now in an advanced state of disrepair.

MK. A first draft law seeking abolition was proposed several years ago to the National Assembly, who rejected it. At the time, the country was just coming out of the war, and deputies were more concerned with security issues. The Honourable André Mbata, the deputy behind the first bill, proposed another in 2019. It has still not been entered onto the parliamentary agenda and is pending review by the National Assembly.

During the 6th World Congress against the Death Penalty in Oslo in 2016, the government pledged to abolish the death penalty. This rhetoric has not translated into action: the government has not proposed any legislation in Parliament despite holding the majority. The President of the Republic has used his power to pardon several times and released some people who had been sentenced to death. But these small achievements are not enough. The government must show that it is firmly committed to moving towards abolishing the death penalty, and that it is not solely concerned with electoral and security issues.

Recently passed legislation states that sexual violence resulting in death no longer qualifies for a death sentence. In this case, the death penalty has been “abolished”. We are asking for that to be extended to all offences.

Several opportunities favourable to abolition have already occurred. The Military Penal Code was amended in 2015 to align national law with the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC). As the death penalty is not included in the range of sentences applicable by the ICC, we believed this would be an opportunity to abolish it definitively. Unfortunately, that has not been the case: the code did incorporate the international criminal offences of the Rome Statute, but it made them punishable by death.

MK. Legal abolition is one possible solution. This is why we plan to file a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court. Our Constitution establishes human life as sacred and states that it must be protected by the State. The application of the death penalty is therefore inconsistent with the Constitution. In fact, the National Human Rights Committee (Commission nationale des droits de l’Homme) issued an opinion on this issue, noting that the death penalty did not actually have a basis in the DRC.

We also work with FIACAT on the connections between the death penalty and torture. The idea is to show that torture, despite being abolished since 1996, still occurs: waiting on death row in appalling prison conditions represents a type of torture. We consistently bring this argument to the authorities in the hope of being better understood.

In the past, I had defended certain partisans of the current regime when they had been convicted by the Kinshasa military court for participating in the insurrectionary movement. As part of our advocacy with different ministries, we remind them that death sentences can still be handed down. If they do not take advantage of being in power to abolish the death penalty, the day may come when – as it did in 2003 – the moratorium is lifted and people will be executed. A moratoria system is fragile. As direct abolition seems unlikely at this time, an interim solution would be to establish a de jure moratorium, which would be more secure. This would save people from getting up every morning and thinking, “The executions will start up again today.”

As part of civil society, we continue to perform advocacy and outreach work. For example, in 2019, we organised a workshop to raise awareness among thought leaders on the necessity of abolishing the death penalty. We work with networks of abolitionist journalists and parliamentarians. We contribute to the production of radio and television programmes to encourage the general public to discuss and debate the necessity of abolishing the death penalty, much like with debates on climate change, for example. We also carry out advocacy work with the National Assembly so that the draft legislation for abolition will one day be entered onto the agenda.

Advocacy for the abolition of the death penalty is daily work. Civil society, both in the Congo and internationally, must tackle this issue head-on.