A court source reported that the former leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s presidential party, who recently joined the opposition, was detained on Tuesday in Kinshasa and sent to jail in connection with proceedings for contempt of the head of state.
After being questioned, MP and former vice-president of the National Assembly “Jean-Marc Kabund has been placed under provisional arrest warrant” at Makala prison in the capital, according to an AFP report from a prosecutor’s magistrate’s office close to the Court of Cassation.
Mr. Kabund is being investigated for “insulting the head of state, damaging imputations, and defamation,” according to the prosecutor’s statement that AFP consulted.
Jean-Marc Kabund, a Kinshasa elector, resigned as first vice-president of the Congolese National Assembly and was dismissed from the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), the party of the president, in July. He then joined the opposition.
Mr. Kabund criticized the “lack of clear vision,” “notorious incompetence and institutionalized mismanagement characterized by carelessness, irresponsibility, enjoyment and predation at the top of the state” by the camp of President Felix Tshisekedi at the time of the announcement of the formation of his own political party, “Alliance for Change.”
In an interview with the French radio station RFI, he stated, “When I speak of embezzlement (…) these are hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, deposited in tax havens, placed in corporations, and this is cash that leaves the country in private planes.”
Kabund also criticized the houses of parliament harshly. Parliament “has become a forum for dealing with meaningless matters and theaters for political clowns” under Tshisekedi, he claimed.
While in Kinshasa, where he met with Tshisekedi, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he was arrested. More and more people in the DRC are speaking out against the nation’s detention of opponents.
According to activist Floribert Anzuluni of the pro-democracy movement Filimbi, Blinken “should protest the intensifying repression against activists, marchers, and journalists, and warn against the growing intolerance of critics.”
According to Anzuluni, the DRC regime’s current behavior “risks undermining the holding of free, credible, and on-time elections in 2023.”
