Christian Mounzéo, a leading anticorruption campaigner in oil-rich Congo-Brazzaville, was arbitrarily arrested and detained by authorities upon his return to the country allegedly because of his criticism of the government’s misuse of oil revenues, Human Rights Watch said today.
On Monday, November 13, immigration police arrested Mounzéo at the airport in the capital Brazzaville when he returned from an advocacy trip in Europe. At the time of his arrest, the authorities reportedly told him that he was being detained because he had “defamed” President Denis Sassou-Nguesso during his advocacy trip abroad.
The police held Mounzéo in custody overnight and then escorted him to a court hearing in Pointe-Noire related to charges filed in April against him and a colleague on a separate matter, also believed to be in retaliation for their anticorruption campaigning.
“The government in Congo-Brazzaville is trying to silence anticorruption activists instead of addressing corruption,” said Arvind Ganesan, director of the Business and Human Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. “When activists allege that the government is misusing the country’s oil wealth, the authorities respond by arresting them.”
Mounzéo is the founder and president of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Engagement for Peace and Human Rights (Rencontre pour la paix et les droits de l'Homme). He is the Congo-Brazzaville coordinator of the Publish What You Pay campaign, an international NGO initiative that promotes transparency and accountability in the use of natural resource revenues around the world. Human Rights Watch is also a member of this campaign.
In addition, Mounzéo is an NGO representative to the British government-sponsored Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Prior to his arrest on Monday, Mounzéo had travelled abroad to attend several official EITI meetings and engage in other advocacy related to oil revenue transparency.
Mounzéo and another anticorruption activist, Brice Mackosso, a member of the Catholic Church Peace and Justice Commission (Commission justice et paix de l'Eglise catholique), were previously arrested on April 6, released, and then rearrested on April 7. The authorities held them in custody until April 28 and then released them on bail. They were charged with “breach of trust [and] complicity in breach of trust and forgery” allegedly related to the misuse of funds from a nongovernmental organization that Mounzéo founded.
A judge initially dropped some of the charges, but the prosecutor is appealing that decision in order to reinstate them. The defendants are pursuing their own appeal to the country’s Supreme Court. On November 14, a judge postponed the hearing in the prosecutor’s appeal until November 28 and released Mounzéo from custody.
Human Rights Watch believes that the case brought against them is a pretext to harass them for their outspoken criticism of government corruption and mismanagement of oil revenue. The arrests generated widespread international attention and led Paul Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank, to criticize their arrests on April 24.
The prosecutor’s activities in this case have been controversial. The order to escort Mounzéo to Pointe-Noire on November 14 may itself have been unlawful. The Ministry of Justice reportedly suspended the prosecutor in August, yet he claims that he was not notified of this order and continues to pursue the case against the two men.
Congo-Brazzaville is the sixth largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, and oil sales account for 94 percent of the country’s export earnings. The country ranked 142 out of 163 countries in Transparency International’s 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index.
The country qualified for debt relief under the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. However, the decision was controversial and was partly premised on improvements in governance and transparency in the use of oil revenues. The government of President Sassou-Nguesso, which came back to power after a civil war in 1997, has also joined EITI.
“Citizens shouldn’t fear arrests when they are trying to determine how public funds are used,” said Ganesan. “A government can hardly be seen as a credible partner in any international transparency initiative when it repeatedly arrests the country’s foremost anticorruption campaigners. This is a crucial test for the World Bank’s new anticorruption strategy.”
Human Rights Watch called upon the international community to condemn the arrest, detention, and ongoing harassment of Mounzéo and Mackosso.
The World Bank, IMF, and EITI should reevaluate their dealings with the government of Congo-Brazzaville because of its lack of commitment to good governance and transparency. In particular, the World Bank should condemn the ongoing harassment and evaluate its relationship with the government in light of its new anticorruption and good-governance strategy.
Human Rights Watch
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