[ad_1]
DR Congo marked the 20th anniversary of the assassination of former President Laurent-Désiré Kabila on Saturday with calls for reconciliation in this badly divided country.
Kabila senior is the father of former President Joseph Kabila who took power after the assassination of January 16, 2001.
In Lubumbashi, in Katanga province, large crowds of supporters of former President Joseph Kabila’s party came to pay homage to his father, popularly known as Mzee (wise sage) in Swahili. He came to power in 1997 after ousting longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
Joseph Kabila has been locked up in his stronghold of Lubumbashi since December, when President Félix Tshisekedi unilaterally ended a fragile coalition backed by Kabila loyalists.
In the capital, Kinshasa, Archbishop Fridolin Ambongo led a ceremony that took place just days after the release of those convicted of organizing the murder of Kabila. They received a presidential pardon from Tshisekedi earlier this month.
The Archbishop called “Kabila’s soul to rest in peace and in peace for his family, for the entire Congolese nation, whom he loved and served until his death”.
Ambongo said the murder “had torn apart part of the Congolese nation” and that it was “normal to bring the culprits to justice”.
And he called on Kabila’s family and his associates for “reconciliation and forgiveness”, saying it was time for a “new beginning”.
President Tshisekedi laid a wreath on the mausoleum of the murdered leader, who was killed in his office by a bodyguard.
The circumstances of the murder were never entirely clear, but they came at a time when rebellions backed by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda were tearing the sprawling country apart.
Laurent Desire Kabila had accepted help from Namibia, Zimbabwe and Angola to calm the unrest and train his army.
In January 2003, 39 people were sentenced to death for the murder of Kabila, but in the same year a moratorium on the death penalty entered into force.
On December 31, President Tshisekedi pardoned the 23 lifers and they were released a few days later.
Some of them called for a new trial, saying they wanted their names cleared.
Source link
