wfn.org | General Secretary of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Congo

["Frank Imhoff" <Frank.Imhoff@elca.org>]

General Secretary of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Congo Provisionally
Released from Police Custody
LWF to Send Pastoral Delegation without Delay

GENEVA, 30 June 2005 (LWI) * 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. (726 words)

(The LWF is a global communion of Christian churches in the Lutheran
tradition. Founded in 1947 in Lund, Sweden, the LWF currently has 138
member churches in 77 countries all over the world, with a total
membership of nearly 66 million. The LWF acts on behalf of its member
churches in areas of common interest such as ecumenical and inter-faith
relations, theology, humanitarian assistance, human rights,
communication, and the various aspects of mission and development work.
Its secretariat is located in Geneva, Switzerland.)

[Lutheran World Information (LWI) is the LWF's information service.
Unless specifically noted, material presented does not represent
positions or opinions of the LWF or of its various units. Where the
dateline of an article contains the notation (LWI), the material may be
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* * *

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