A year after raising assessments against Ferdinand Ilunga Luyoyo, a former Congolese police general targeted for his role in the repression that preceded the 2018 elections, the European Union (EU) announced on June 19 that it would remove Kalev Mutond and Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary make your power. list.
Under evaluation since 2017
These two essential elements of the Kabila era have been the subject of restrictive measures since May 29, 2017. The EU then accused them of “obstructing” the electoral process and “contributing […] acts that protect serious human rights. Respectively heads of the National Intelligence Agency (ANR) and Minister of the Interior at the time of the events, then joined the list to do already detained by Brussels in December 2016.
Since then, every year, the two men have filed appeals to try to put an end to these measures, which include “a ban on entry into EU territory” and “the freezing of assets”, but have been systematically refused.
The EU's change of heart, however, is not surprising. On March 8, the EU Court of Justice issued a ruling that paves the way for the lifting of the assessments: “The EU Council was unable to establish the merits of maintaining the restrictive measures in question [leur] respect”, we conceive read in its conclusions.
“Very old facts”
The facts attributed to Emmanuel Ramazani “have become too old to explain, by themselves, the maintenance [of these sanctions]”. Replaced at the head of the ANR in 2019, “Kalev” became an advisor to the then prime minister, Sylvestre Ilunga Ilunkamba, until the latter's fall in January 2021.
Implicated a few months later by acts of “physical and moral torture, arbitrary arrests, illegal detention, death threats and attempted murder”, and the target of a complaint from the former president of Lubumbashi, Jean-Claude Muyambo, Kalev Mutond had followed the exile route, before returning with the greatest discretion at the beginning of August 2022. The EU Council has failed to demonstrate that it “still exerts influence about Certain fractions of the security forces”, according to the ruling handed down by the EU Court of Justice on March 8.
New criteria
Aware of the increasing difficulty in implementing the maintenance of the restrictive measures taken in 2016 and 2017, Brussels has been trying for more than a year to modify its evaluation system, which is why it integrated new criteria in 2022. It now allows us to see personalities who play a role in violence in the East. Last December, several new names were added to its list, including Belgian businessman Alain Goetz, M23 military spokesman Willy Ngoma and former minister Justin Bitakwira.
Several personalities sanctioned in 2016 and 2017, however, remain sanctioned. This is the case of the current inspector general of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabriel Amisi Kumba (aka Tango Four), the former head of the Republican Guard, Gaston Hugues Ilunga Kampete, or the former minister Évariste Boshab, who has since joined the current president, Félix Tshisekedi.
In its press release of 19 June, the EU stated that it was willing to register “any person who obstructs a consensual and important exit from the crisis with a view to holding elections in the DRC, who is involved in visible burials of human rights, human or in graves notified of these rights, as well as those responsible for maintaining armed conflicts, instability and insecurity or for inciting there violence".
