Cardinal Malula under Mobutu, Cardinals Etsou and Monsengwo from Mobutu to Joseph Kabila via Laurent-Désiré Kabila, the heads of the Catholic Church have always been goads for the ruling class which has had to deal with the freedom of speech of the prelates and their systematic defense of the interests of the Congolese population.
Ambongo, the heir
The current Cardinal Ambongo follows in the footsteps of his predecessors with a speech, although sometimes more polite than those who preceded him, but which dares to put his finger on what is wrong in the architecture of the Congolese state. Felix Tshisekedi.
An unacceptable attitude for this regime which has always relied on norms to ensure its power and impose its choices, which has evaded the truth, thrown opponents and journalists behind bars and which has established victimization as the first defense argument to attempt to justify all his failings.
Justice, through its main zealot, the attorney general at the Court of Cassation, Firmin Mvonde Mambu, central figure in the assassination converted into suicide of the opponent Chérubin Okende, therefore sent a missive to the attorney general of the court of High Court of Kinshasa-Matete, in which he orders the opening of a judicial investigation against Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, Archbishop of Kinshasa.
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Flight forward
The Attorney General at the Court of Cassation speaks of “seditious remarks” held by the cardinal during his various public speaking engagements.
Words that the magistrate judges to be of a nature “to discourage the soldiers of the armed forces of the Republic who are fighting at the front, but also to incite mistreatment by rebels and other invaders of local populations already bruised by so many years of destabilization.”
Cardinal Ambongo, according to the letter from prosecutor Mvonde, did not appear in his office on April 25 as he would have been invited to do so. “an exchange around certain files under investigation”.
Which allows the magistrate to add “Faced with the evidence of these behaviors which amount to offenses against and against the homeland, its people and its leaders and which undermine the laws of the Republic, I order you to open a judicial investigation against the prelate who violates consciences and seems to find pleasure through these false rumors and other incitements of populations to revolt against established institutions and to attacks against human lives. Acting otherwise will amount to a denial of justice on your part, continues the magistrate, who adds: your inactivism will be considered as complicity…”
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The notion of “false rumors” was already used by the Congolese authorities recently to justify the arrest and incarceration for seven months (election time) of journalist Stany Bujakera, now finally free.
Victim of everything, responsible for nothing
Once again, the Congolese regime is looking for scapegoats to hide the real problems of a state which has refused to invest in its army, preferring to pay and arm rebels, finance mercenaries and call for help from neighbors or regional organizations which will never come to die for the Congo in the face of rebels that Kinshasa strives not to recognize.
After the Rwandans, after the troops of the East African Community, after the Appel brand, it is therefore the Catholic clergy who have become the adversaries of a corrupt regime, less and less credible, which refuses to endorse the less responsibility for the crisis the country is going through.
This letter from prosecutor Mvonde sparks a torrent of reactions on social networks. For many Congolese, this attempt to muzzle the clergy is one gesture too many. The clergy did not provoke power, they played the role that has always been theirs.
