Disappearances in Kinshasa Raise New Concerns Over State Repression in DR Congo

Last updated: 22 September 2026

Logo of the National Cyber Defense Council (Conseil national de cyberdéfense) at the entrance to the National Transport Office in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. © 2025 Human Rights Watch

On March 10, 2026, Human Rights Watch published a report alleging that Congolese security forces have been responsible for a growing pattern of enforced disappearances in and around Kinshasa since March 2025. The article presents the issue as more than a series of isolated arrests, arguing that people have been secretly detained, denied access to lawyers and relatives, and in many cases held through a shadowy process centered on the National Cyber Defense Council (CNC), an institution originally created to investigate cybercrime.

According to the report, researchers documented 17 people who were forcibly disappeared or reported missing over the past year and received credible accounts of several additional cases. Many of those who later resurfaced were found to have been held by the CNC, often for weeks or months, after being taken by members of the Republican Guard, the Congolese National Police, or officials in civilian clothes. The article argues that the arrests were typically carried out without warrants, without clear charges, and outside normal judicial oversight, creating conditions that fit the international legal definition of enforced disappearance.

A central part of the report is the alleged role of the CNC itself. The article says the body was established in 2023 by presidential ordinance to coordinate cyber defense and cyber intelligence. But instead of limiting itself to cybercrime investigations, it is described as having evolved into a structure involved in arrests, interrogations, and secret detention. The report adds that international media have previously written about the CNC’s access to advanced surveillance tools, especially for targeted eavesdropping on messaging applications. In that sense, the story is not only about unlawful detention, but also about the expansion of a security body beyond its formal mandate into politically sensitive policing.

The report says researchers interviewed more than 34 people between July 2025 and March 2026, including 9 former detainees and 11 relatives of detainees. Their accounts describe a consistent pattern. Arrests often took place at home, sometimes in the middle of the night, with officers entering suddenly, pointing weapons, seizing phones and personal belongings, and taking people away without presenting any judicial order. Some detainees said they were blindfolded during transport and moved between multiple detention sites in Kinshasa. These details are important because they suggest a system of concealment rather than ordinary law enforcement.

The article identifies several locations repeatedly mentioned by former detainees. Many said they were first interrogated either at the Stade des Martyrs national stadium or at CNC offices inside the National Transport Office (ONATRA) complex in Kinshasa. Some were then transferred to other undisclosed places, including what they believed were private rooms in hotels. One of the strongest details in the report comes from detainees’ descriptions of being held in unofficial or hidden places, where they say normal legal guarantees did not apply. One former detainee recalled being told, after asking for legal counsel, that “the law doesn’t apply here.” The article uses such testimony to argue that the detentions were designed to exist outside ordinary judicial control.

The reasons given to detainees during questioning, according to the report, often had little to do with cybercrime. Instead, many were accused of colluding with the M23 armed group, maintaining ties to former president Joseph Kabila, or taking part in supposed coup plots. Others believed they were detained because of opposition political views. The article places these accusations in the wider context of the war in eastern Congo, where government forces are fighting the M23 and accusing Rwanda of supporting the group. It also notes that Kabila has been accused by the Congolese government of supporting the M23 and allied structures, and that he received an in absentia death sentence in September 2025 after what the report characterizes as a politically motivated trial. This context is important because it suggests the disappearances are tied to a broader climate of wartime suspicion and internal political repression.

One episode highlighted in the report involved at least 12 opposition members of parliament who were arrested in September 2025 at a hotel in Kinshasa and taken to the CNC office at ONATRA. According to the article, they were accused of backing Vital Kamerhe, then head of the National Assembly, whom the ruling party later pushed aside. A former detainee and media reports cited there said the lawmakers were blindfolded, accused of corruption, told that parliamentary immunity did not matter, and then released the same night or the following morning. The case is significant because it suggests that even elected officials were not protected from this system of arbitrary detention.

The report also dwells on the experience of families trying to locate detained relatives. Many said they searched prisons across Kinshasa, wrote to authorities, and still received no clear answer about where their loved ones were being held. Some only learned, through informal channels, that relatives were inside CNC custody. One family member described searching unsuccessfully for days before discovering unofficially that a missing relative was at ONATRA. Even then, no authority confirmed it. The article argues that this combination of state involvement, concealment of whereabouts, and denial of access to lawyers and families is exactly what makes enforced disappearance such a grave abuse under international law.

In legal terms, the article says the arrests and detentions violate both Congolese criminal procedure and international human rights standards, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Congo’s criminal procedure code requires arrest warrants in all but limited cases of people caught in the act, while the constitution guarantees the right to counsel at every stage of criminal proceedings, including police inquiry. Former detainees and relatives told researchers that lawyers were repeatedly denied access. The report therefore frames the problem not only as abusive practice, but as a direct breach of domestic and international legal obligations.

The CNC has denied formal arrest powers. The article says CNC officials met with researchers in November and December 2025, when one official described the unit as existing to coordinate essential services and intervene when necessary. In a later written response dated February 17, CNC head Jean-Claude Bukasa reportedly said the body “does not have the power to arrest or detain” anyone. But the report treats that claim skeptically, pointing to detainee testimony, family accounts, and the organization’s own observed access to one CNC detention facility. Researchers were allowed limited access to that site in November, in the presence of Bukasa, senior staff, a military magistrate, and the president of the National Human Rights Commission. Even though the visit was controlled, it appeared to confirm that the CNC was connected to detention operations.

Another troubling element in the report concerns what happened to some detainees after release. Several said they were forced to sign documents promising not to criticize the president, not to engage in political activity, and not to speak about their detention. One former detainee said officials warned that the document would be used against him if he violated its terms. The article presents this as evidence that the objective of the detentions may not simply have been intelligence gathering, but also intimidation and political control. Other cases moved from CNC detention into the military or civilian justice system, where detainees now face charges including crimes against state security and insulting the head of state.

Overall, the report portrays the disappearances in Kinshasa as part of a broader shift in how the Congolese government is responding to political opposition and wartime insecurity. A unit created to address cyber threats is depicted as functioning as a proxy detention apparatus, operating with the assistance of police and presidential security forces, outside meaningful judicial oversight. The article calls on the authorities to immediately acknowledge the detention of anyone still held, reveal their whereabouts, allow access to lawyers and relatives, release those unlawfully detained or promptly bring them before a judge, and investigate all reported cases, including where victims were later freed. In its broader framing, the issue is not only the fate of the missing, but whether emergency politics and security fears are being used to normalize secret detention in the capital.

Conclusion

The article presents the disappearances in Kinshasa as a serious warning about the direction of state power in the Democratic Republic of Congo. What emerges is a picture of arrests carried out without warrants, people hidden from families and lawyers, and a cyber-defense body allegedly acting as a detention mechanism in a moment of political and military tension.

More broadly, the story is attracting attention because it links domestic repression to the wider conflict environment in eastern Congo. In that context, the report suggests that the struggle against armed threats is increasingly being used to justify abuses in the capital itself, raising concerns about rule of law, political freedom, and the protection of basic rights in a country already under severe strain.