CCPR/C/125/D/3041/2017
2004 and 2005. The author submits that her deportation together with her two children to
Angola would amount to a violation of their rights under articles 6 (1), 7, 9, 13, 17 (1), 23
(1) and 24 (1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Optional
Protocol entered into force for the State party on 19 August 1976. The author is represented
by counsel, Mylène Barrière, of the Montreal City Mission.
1.2
On 8 November 2017, pursuant to rule 92 of its rules of procedure, the Committee,
acting through its Special Rapporteur on New Communications and Interim Measures,
requested the State party not to deport the author and her children while it was examining
the communication. On 4 March 2018, the State party requested that the interim measures
be lifted because the deportation of the author to Angola would not result in irreparable
harm, the author having failed to present even a prima facie case or to substantiate the claim
that her deportation to Angola would result in irreparable harm. The Committee rejected the
request on 17 October 2018. The State party has postponed the removal of the author and
her children, who currently reside in Canada.
The facts as submitted by the author
2.1
The author and her children are part of a larger family that also comprises the
author’s husband and father of the children, L.M., two younger siblings and the author’s
mother.
2.2
From 1998 to 2001, L.M. was working as a cook for the head of the National
Intelligence Agency in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. To be selected for that
position, he changed his name for J.M. to appear to belong to the same ethnicity as that of
his employer (Ngwaka).
2.3
On 16 January 2001, the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Laurent Désiré Kabila, was killed and a purge of those allegedly responsible began in the
country. On 17 February 2001, the author’s husband was questioned by the police at his
place of work together with all his co-workers, because his employer was among the
suspects. During the interrogations, he was accused by the police of being complicit in the
murder; he escaped the house through the back door and immediately fled to Angola.
2.4
The author subsequently took shelter at a friend’s house. After she was informed
that the police had broken into their former house, she sought shelter at her parents’ house,
which was in a different district of Kinshasa.
2.5
On 10 March 2001, after the police came looking for the author at her parents’ house
on two occasions, she left the Democratic Republic of the Congo for Angola with her
mother and her brother. Her father and other siblings joined them soon after.
2.6
In Angola, the author’s husband met other persons originally from the Democratic
Republic of the Congo but with Angolan nationality. In order that the authors could obtain
Angolan identity documents, the said persons testified that they all were part of the same
family. The family was, however, subjected to discrimination by neighbours because they
were nationals of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and by others, who were envious
of the author’s husband’s position in a petrol company.
2.7
In 2008, owing to the hardships they endured in Angola as citizens of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, the author and her husband decided to return to the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. The couple thought that they would no longer risk
persecution seven years after the events. The author’s husband was, however, arrested and
faced imminent execution. L.M. was then helped to escape from detention by the officer in
charge of his detention, a childhood friend of his brother’s. The officer went to the author’s
house, asked her to provide L.M. with an Angolan passport, and then placed L.M. in a
plane to Angola, where the author joined him.
2.8
On 9 January 2009, after discovering that the Angolan secret police were seeking to
extradite the author’s husband to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the family escaped
to the United States of America with authentic Angolan passports that they had obtained
through misrepresentation.
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