June 30, 2005

GENEVA – Rev. Dr Ishmael Noko, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), has learned with relief of the provisional release from police custody of Ngoy Mwanana Lusanga, general secretary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Congo (ELCC). Dr Noko said he welcomed the release and appreciated that Democratic Republic of the Congo Minister of Justice, Honorius Kisimba Ngoy, had considered an LWF appeal to release Lusanga. The LWF would immediately send a pastoral delegation representing the global constituency of the LWF communion to meet with the Congolese justice minister and other state authorities, Dr Noko told Lutheran World Information.

In a 27 June 2005 letter to the Congolese Minister of Justice, Dr Noko had expressed his "grave concern" over Lusanga's arrest: "I believe that M. Lusanga was arrested on your orders, but the charges against him are far from clear. I do not believe that M. Lusanga is a threat to the State, to the church, or to any individual," he wrote. Dr Noko said he was very concerned by the developments and that there was, at the least, a grave lack of transparency about the reasons for M. Lusanga's arrest and imprisonment, and a strong implication that he had been arbitrarily detained. "In short, there appear to have been a series of serious infringements of M. Lusanga's human rights, of which you are the chief legal guardian in the Democratic Republic of the Congo."

Dr Noko called on the minister of justice to urgently rectify the situation. In the event of no satisfactory reply to his letter by Wednesday, 29 June, he would be obliged to make his concerns "public and to the entire Lutheran communion."

Lusanga, arrested on Monday afternoon, June 20, directly after a Ministry of Justice hearing, was imprisoned the next day at Kasapa Prison in Lubumbashi. The reason for the detention, given by the Ministry of Justice, was that the ELCC had tarnished the minister's public reputation through a number of protest letters written by the church to the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo about the way in which a conflict between them was being handled by the Ministry of Justice. Having signed all the letters in his capacity as ELCC General Secretary, Lusanga had come into view.

On Saturday, June 25, Lusanga was transferred to the Lubumbashi University Hospital under police escort for health reasons. According to the ELCC, he was provisionally released from detention on Wednesday evening, June 29, and police surveillance was lifted. The 68-year-old Lusanga will continue to stay in hospital because of his state of health. To date, the ELCC has no information as to the specific conditions of his provisional release from prison.

The background to the conflict is the election of Bishop Daniel Kabamba Mukala wa Kasonku on 16 February 2003 as the ELCC's bishop and legal representative. As required by law, the Congolese Ministry of Justice was notified of the decisions and results voted by the synod. By decree of March 20, the ministry endorsed the synod decisions. The decree was promulgated in April 2003 in the government's "Journal Officiel." But on 29 September 2003, the newly elected Minister of Justice, Honorius Kisimba Ngoy, rescinded the decision, and declared the election of the bishop and legal representative of the ELCC invalid.

In his letter to the Ministry of Justice, Dr Noko stressed that "the tragic conflicts which have afflicted the DRC have ensured a considerable amount of international goodwill for your country's struggle to rebuild." The LWF, he added, had undertaken extensive humanitarian activities in the eastern part of the country and had gathered an international inter-faith constituency in support of the search for a just and sustainable peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a whole.

"A situation such as that described above undermines the government's efforts to gather international support, it puts the country's reputation at stake. The welfare of M. Lusanga touches all members of the LWF family around the world. However, I do not wish to be responsible for any loss of goodwill towards the DCR," Dr Noko wrote.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Congo has been a member of the LWF since 1986, and has some 136,000 members.

Lutheran World Information