Anti-corruption activist Christian Mounzeo was arrested last week at the airport as he touched down in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, for allegedly defaming Denis Sassou-Nguesso, the Congo’s president. These events follow on the heels of Mounzeo’s criticisms at an international conference of the continued mismanagement of oil wealth in Congo-Brazzaville.
Mounzeo was speaking at the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Conference, held in Oslo last month, where he was also elected to the EITI board. The EITI is an international body working to promote the publication of revenue generated by oil, gas and mining resources in developing countries.
Human rights campaigners believe that the continued judicial harassment of Mounzeo, as well as his colleague Brice Mackosso, is an attempt by the state to silence their calls for greater accountability in the management of the Republic of Congo’s oil revenue. The two men are on trial on charges of breach of trust and forgery; charges largely believed to have been concocted in order to prevent them from continuing to do their work.
”We work in an environment in which we are traumatised, there is a climate of impunity, [even though] the principal of freedom of expression is in our local and international laws which the government has ratified,” says Mounzeo, who has since been released, though his trial continues.
Sassou-Nguesso came to power for the second time following a full-scale civil war in 1997 which ended when he and his Angolan-backed troops ousted Pascal Lissouba, the country’s first democratically elected president. A second civil war erupted in 1998, displacing over a third of the country’s population and killing thousands. In 2002 Sassou-Nguesso won elections in which he stood uncontested as he had banned his opposition rivals from running. Sassou-Nguesso is currently the president of the African Union.
The harassment of Mounzeo and Mackosso began in April this year and is highlighted in a report entitled ‘Eye on the EITI’ released by Publish What You Pay (PWYP) last month. PWYP is an international coalition of civil society organisations, working to promote transparent and accountable management of natural resource revenues.
Mounzeo and Mackosso were then charged with forgery, misappropriating funds and breach of trust by Engagement for Peace and Human Rights, an NGO Mounzeo founded. Global Witness, an organisation that examines the link between the exploitation of natural resources and human rights abuses, funds the NGO.
”The government’s idea is to prevent civil society from being independent. The government wants there to be only one conversation, the official one, and it puts everything in motion to prevent us from working and considers us enemies. Are we the enemies of the republic who fight for economic and social rights?” asks Mounzeo.
In June their trial on allegations of forgery went ahead, despite the fact that a pre-trial judge found the accusations of misappropriating funds and breach of trust to have been baseless. According to the PWYP report, the June trial violated Congolese law and ”international human rights conventions to which the Republic of Congo is signatory”. The violations included arbitrary detention, illegal searches and the seizure of documents unrelated to the charges. On October 23 the prosecution succeeded in having the charges of breach of trust reinstated, despite the appeal coming outside the timeframe allowed under Congolese law.
”We see this as a clear effort to prevent them from further campaigning on oil revenue transparency,” said Dr Sarah Wykes of the Global Witness oil campaign.
The Congo’s management of its oil revenue has been called into question before. In a report released by Global Witness last year it is revealed that one-third of Congo’s 2004 oil revenue was unaccounted for. Mounzeo said recently that despite earning almost $2,5-billion in oil revenue per year, 70% of the population still lives below the poverty line. Global Witness also raised concerns about the willingness of international oil traders, such as Glencore, to do business with the Congolese state, despite the dubious activities of key Congo government officials.
”There is a paradox between the oil revenues that we have always had and the poverty that is growing more acute. The opacity in the management of the oil revenue has prevented oil revenues from helping development in the country. If they were transparent we could … take into consideration the priority needs of the population,” explains Mounzeo.
Regardless of such concerns, Congo-Brazzaville was granted debt relief under the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Highly Indebted Poor Countries programme in 2005. This seems to be a contradiction of the IMF and World Bank’s own reform measures to ensure that Congo’s oil wealth goes towards development and poverty alleviation.
