Monday, 8 October 2012

Kafkaesque Republic: White Opposition leader Pierre-Jacques Chalupa gets 4-year jail term for forgery and use of forgeries

(PHOTO: Mireille Akamia Chalupa & her jailed husband Pierre-Jacques

Chalupa at Kinshasa Makala Prison, Monday, July 30, 2012)



***



The Kafkaesque nightmare of White Congolese opposition leader

Pierre-Jacques Chalupa took a turn for the worse Saturday, October 6,

when the Magistrates' Court of Ngaliema, a Commune of Kinshasa, found

him guilty and sentenced him to 4 years behind bars for forgery and

use of forgeries.



The hope his family and supporters entertained that he might be

cleared and released in the run-up to the Francophony Summit that will

be held in Kinshasa (October 12-14) has thus just been dashed by the

Magistrates' Court.



The prosecution alleged--and the Court just concurred--that Chalupa,

64, obtained Congolese citizenship and a voter's registration card

under criminally false pretenses.



Chalupa was born in Uvira, South Kivu, in 1948 to Portuguese parents

and has since never lived anywhere else in the world.



Chalupa is the founder and chairman of the radical opposition

political party "Action pour la Démocratie et le Développement au

Congo (ADD-Congo)"--or Action for Democracy and Development in the

Congo.



ADD-Congo belongs to the political plank that rallied around Etienne

Tshisekedi's UDPS.



Elected MP in the 2006 legislative elections in the Kinshasa

constituency of Lukunga, his parliamentary mandate was mysteriously

invalidated a few months later.



Chalupa ran again unsuccessfully in 2011 in the same constituency,

though critics of the regime claim he'd in fact won.



Chalupa has been an inmate of the Kinshasa Makala Prison since

February 2, where he was transferred shortly after his arrest in late

January.



His wife, Mireille Akamia Chalupa, told the press after sentencing

that her husband is being hounded for his "political convictions."



The rights group Voice of the Voiceless (VSV) sees in the saga of

Chalupa yet another evidence of the relentless "harassment of

oppositionists" by the regime.



And yesterday, in an interview with Radio France Internationale (RFI),

one of Chalupa's lawyers, Hubert Efole, angrily exclaimed: "The

misfortune of Chalupa is to have been born White!"



In Kinshasa streets and on Congolese blogosphere, people are shaking

their heads in disbelief.



They point to other so-called Congolese politicians and members of the

military--like Azarias Ruberwa, Bizima Karahamwetu, Moïse Nyarugabo,

Jean-Bosco Ntaganda, and Laurent Nkandabatware--who are known to have

been born in Rwanda, and yet were or are still left unmolested by the

powers that be.



Hence the conclusion that Pierre-Jacques Chalupa is a "political prisoner."



Mireille Akamia Chalupa and her husband's lawyers have vowed to appeal

this iniquitous verdict.



--(With radiookapi.net, rfi.fr, Congolese blogosphere, & Kinshasa

Radio-Trottoir)--



***

PHOTO CREDITS: John Bompengo

Via: radiookapi.net

No comments:

Post a Comment