刚果政权围猎反对派 Congo’s regime hounds its opponents

EARLY IN THE morning on January 18th security officers arrived at Aubin Minaku’s home in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and took the opposition politician away. He has not been heard from since. On January 5th masked men dragged Nathanaël Onokomba out of a talk he was giving in Kinshasa. His lawyer says the activist was subsequently held incommunicado for five days, beaten and denied food.

The two men are the latest victims of a widening crackdown on Congo’s opposition. The failure of an American-brokered deal to end a conflict in the east that pits Congo’s army against Rwandan troops and M23, a rebel group supported by Rwanda, has weakened the government and made it increasingly paranoid about dissent. Amid a hunt for enemies within, it has become disturbingly common for armed men to knock on opponents’ doors in the middle of the night and take them away to secret detention sites.

The rise in repression looks like an attempt to distract from the government’s inability to restore control over eastern Congo. A peace deal signed in Washington in December called for Rwanda to withdraw its troops and cease support for M23. It also offered American help to Congo in return for access to the country’s minerals. But the agreement has neither stopped the fighting nor prevented M23 from consolidating its presence.

Associates of Joseph Kabila, a former president whom the government accuses of colluding with M23, are most at risk. A military court sentenced Mr Kabila, who is probably outside the country, to death for treason in October. Mr Minaku, a Kabila loyalist, was arrested a few weeks after the head of Mr Kabila’s party was detained. His whereabouts are unknown. The party has been banned.

But the repression goes beyond Mr Kabila’s acolytes. According to Mr Onokomba’s lawyer, the activist’s arrest appears to have been prompted by his claims on social media that life was better during the Belgian colonial period than under Félix Tshisekedi, the president, and by jokes about the flimsy peace deal with Rwanda.

All major opposition parties have recently complained about arbitrary arrests; most of their leaders are in exile. Seth Kikuni, one of the few prominent opposition politicians to remain in the country, said on January 19th that he had fled, too.

Nor has the repression spared the armed forces. Over the past year Congo has arrested a former army chief of staff, a former head of its military intelligence agency and the former head of the president’s personal military bureau, among others. Charges range from treason to plotting against Mr Tshisekedi.

Congo is hardly known for its thriving political freedoms, but human-rights groups say the recent wave of arrests is remarkable for its breadth. It is unclear how many have been arrested, but it may be hundreds. High-profile cases are handled by the CNC, a shadowy, relatively new agency that reports directly to the president. More people are being held incommunicado without access to lawyers or regard for due process. Sometimes, humiliating videos of detainees asking for forgiveness turn up on social media. “There’s a total lack of control” in the security apparatus, says one local researcher, who argues the system is close to collapse and steeped in fear of coup plots. “We’re in a war, anything goes,” the researcher says.

The justice minister has defended the arrests as a way to protect national security. But they are unlikely to further that aim. Mr Tshisekedi has little to show for his time in office besides more than four years of worsening conflict. Rather than cow disgruntled Congolese, the crackdown could create new, powerful enemies.