CAT/C/48/D/364/2008
6 et seq., in which it states that individuals must establish that they would face a personal,
present and substantial risk of torture if they were to be returned to their country of origin.
While article 3, paragraph 2, of the Convention does provide that all relevant considerations
— including the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or
mass violations of human rights — should be taken into account, it also states that the
purpose of doing so is to determine whether an individual would be at personal danger of
being subjected to torture. And yet, as the Federal Administrative Tribunal establishes in its
judgement of 24 September 2008, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is not currently in
a situation of war or civil war and is not experiencing widespread violence throughout its
territory to an extent that would justify the automatic assumption that all complainants from
that State were in real danger regardless of the individual circumstances in each case.
4.5
According to the information provided by the Swiss embassy in Kinshasa in
December 2008, there is currently no ethnic conflict nor are particular ethnic groups being
persecuted in Kinshasa, where the complainant and his children lived prior to their
departure. Furthermore, the residents of Kinshasa consider the war in the east to be a
conflict between the elites of all the ethnic groups that is being waged for economic and
political ends. Nor do they consider the Tutsi and Hutu, of whom there are some 100,000
living in Kinshasa, responsible for that conflict. Consequently, the State party claims that
the complainants would not face a real and substantial danger because of their origins if
they were to be returned to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
4.6
The State party further notes that the petition from the Congolese Tutsi community
denouncing the continued threat of genocide, dated 13 November 2007 and appended to the
present complaint, was submitted only to the Committee, not to the authorities of the State
party. The State party notes, however, that this petition refers to the general situation of the
Tutsi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and therefore does not concern the
complainant and his children, especially since, in the course of the asylum proceedings, the
Swiss authorities had called their Tutsi origins into question.
4.7
The State party adds that the credibility of the complainant and his children has also
been called into question during the asylum proceedings, particularly with regard to his
detention at Joseph Kabila’s residence and his abduction by militiamen in Bunia. While
acknowledging the difficulties the complainant experienced in 1998, the Swiss authorities
do not consider them to have been serious enough to constitute a risk of future persecution.
In addition, the amount of time that elapsed between the complainant’s problems in 1998,
which might have been linked to his ethnic origin, and his departure in 2003 precludes any
possibility of a link between those problems and the asylum application.
4.8
The State party further notes that the complainant and his children have not supplied
evidence of any political activity to support their asylum application.
4.9
The State party is of the view that the complainant has never established that he is a
Rwandan of Tutsi ethnicity. He has simply denied the results of the Swiss embassy’s
investigations of the matter, without backing up his claims, and restated his position before
the Committee without providing any further evidence. He informed the authorities of the
State party that he had hidden in a specific location in November 1998 to escape the
violence against Rwandans in Kinshasa. The results of the State party’s investigation show,
however, that the complainant was not known at that address. This claim therefore does not
appear to be credible. What is more, the complainant has not made this argument before the
Committee. The investigation also showed that the complainant had never been to Bunia,
which is why his claims regarding his abduction by militiamen lack credibility.
4.10 The investigation has also shed some doubt on the credibility of the complainant’s
children, it having been established that they had not been subjected to insults or threats at
school or in their neighbourhood. On the contrary, they lived a privileged life at the address
GE.12-43679
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