CAT/C/54/D/490/2012
country. She has also been a member of the Mouvement de Libération du Congo (MLC),
which at that time was the major opposition party in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The complainant attended MLC meetings and was active in the party.
2.2
On 12 March 2009, the complainant travelled to Dongo to hold a meeting aimed at
mobilizing local women. At the time, the Armée de Libération du Congo (ALC) — the
armed section of MLC — and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(Forces armées de la République démocratique du Congo — FARDC) were engaged in
armed conflict. The meeting was interrupted by FARDC soldiers. The complainant was
wearing an MLC T-shirt and an MLC scarf. The soldiers also found an MLC membership
card in her bag. The soldiers arrested the complainant and other women who were
participating in the meeting. The complainant was imprisoned in their camp, held in a pit,
raped and constantly assaulted by the soldiers during the two to three months that she was
detained. She managed to escape when the camp was attacked by opposition forces. She
found refuge in a local church. The people in the church treated her injuries and helped her
to flee the country.
2.3
The complainant travelled to Finland and applied for asylum on 16 February 2010.
She presented a medical report, which described the injuries inflicted on her during her
detention and the effects of the treatment to which she had been subjected in the military
camp.1 On 28 September 2010, the Finnish Immigration Service decided to deport the
complainant, having rejected her application as incoherent and implausible. The
Immigration Service found that the injuries listed in the medical certificate presented by the
complainant (scars, post-traumatic pain symptoms and mental anxiety), although not
inconsistent with the complainant’s statements, could have been inflicted in ways other than
those described by the complainant. The Immigration Service did not find the complainant
to have a political profile that would place her at risk of rights violations upon return to her
home country.
2.4
The complainant appealed to the Helsinki Administrative Court, which rejected her
appeal on 20 September 2011. The Court stated that neither the Immigration Service nor the
Court were able to find any reference to armed clashes between FARDC and ALC in the
Dongo region in March 2009. The Court did not find the complainant to have a particular
political or social profile and stated that she had not claimed to have been a victim of
violations in her home town, Kinshasa. The Court found that, if returned to her country, it
was unlikely that the complainant would be of particular interest to the authorities,
especially in Kinshasa.
2.5
The complainant submits that, as a result of interpretation problems during her
interview, the Immigration Service and, subsequently, the Court assumed that the
complainant was not a member of MLC, although in fact she had been an active member of
the party since 2002.
1
According to the medical statement issued by a physician on 2 June 2010, the complainant was very
anxious when she arrived in Finland, suffered from headaches, memory problems and sleep disorders
and had trouble breathing. She was prescribed antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication and
painkillers. At the time of writing the present report, the complainant was found to be in a good
general state, calm, clear-headed, if a little melancholic. The complainant’s scars were found to be
consistent with the way they were caused, as described by her. For example, a scar on the
complainant’s right buttock was consistent with the result of a stab wound and the small superficial
linear wounds were consistent with the after-effects of superficial cuts caused by a bladed weapon.
The complainant’s symptoms were also consistent with post-traumatic pain symptoms, as was her
mental anxiety. The complainant’s mental state was found to be slowly improving but regular
monitoring was advised.
3