ACI Africa, Mar 22, 2024 / 07:00 am
The decision by the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to lift a 2003 ban on the death penalty is retrogressive, the local ordinary of the country’s Kinshasa Archdiocese, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, has said.
In a statement issued March 13, DRC’s justice minister, Rose Mutombo, announced the lifting of the two-decade-old moratorium on the death penalty in the Central African nation.
Mutombo has been quoted as saying that “acts of treachery or espionage have taken a toll on the population and the Republic” and that the restoration of the death penalty is to “rid our country’s army of traitors … and curb the upsurge in acts of terrorism and urban banditry resulting in death.”
In a March 17 interview with the French-language Catholic television channel KTO, Ambongo faulted the justice minister’s pronouncements, saying he finds it “abnormal that a government that claims to be responsible could take such a decision.”