Kinshasa, June 24, 2025. On this day, in the hushed courtroom of the High Military Court, a heavy silence fills the room. This is not merely a trial for judicial misconduct. It is a plea for memory, dignity, and the survival of 36,000 farmers who have been uprooted from their ancestral lands in North Kivu. The trial of a military judge accused of bias is only the visible surface of a broader, deeper injustice. In truth, this is a trial against the criminalization of land rights defenders in a country where land is often worth more than life itself.
The Masisi-Rutshuru Case: When Land Becomes a Legal Battleground; The facts are simple, but their implications are vast. Following violence by the RCD and the militarization of agricultural lands in Eastern Congo, 36,000 people were expelled from concessions they had occupied for generations as former workers of the commercial and industrial company SICIA Luboga. Dispossessed and marginalized, they formed a peaceful committee. Their goal: to claim their right to remain. Among them was Ndesho Kabwene, a community leader and land rights activist, now sentenced to 20 years in prison for… criminal association.
This Tuesday, the case was presented in detail: official letters, conciliation agreements, exchanges with the authorities. The committee was neither clandestine nor subversive. It was legal, recognized, and engaged in peaceful dialogue with the state. Yet, the military judge in Goma, in his initial ruling, dismissed this evidence without debate. He arbitrarily expanded the scope of the charges, citing four concessions that were never mentioned in the referral order.
A Serious Procedural Violation, Lawyers Say “This judge didn’t just rule in favor of one party. He distorted the facts, ignored the evidence, and convicted an innocent man based on documents that were never discussed in court,” stated Master Jean-Claude Bashangwa, lead counsel for the plaintiff. Behind the figure of Ndesho Kabwene lies an entire climate justice movement under attack. These community committees, like the one he co-founded, are part of a global legal support program for land and climate defenders, supported by the Global Climate Legal Defense (CLIDEF). They fight against land grabbing, illegal deforestation, and fossil fuel expansion. In practice, they are doing the work that states refuse to do: protecting subsistence farmland, safeguarding primary forests, and helping farmers remain on their lands.
By demanding the judge’s dismissal, $500,000 in damages, and the annulment of the 20-year prison sentence, the lawyers raise a key question: In 2025, can people still be condemned for defending life through peaceful means? “These defenders never took up arms. They wrote, pleaded, and negotiated. And they are treated like criminals,” lamented a judicial observer present at the hearing.
This trial could become a landmark case. It shines a light on one of the darkest corners of environmental activism in Africa: the judicial repression of community defenders. While states call for climate justice on the international stage, they imprison their own activists at home. On June 24, 2025, in Kinshasa, the debate was not legal—it was existential. Can one defend the land without risking their freedom? Can one fight for their roots without being criminalized?
This trial, beyond the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a call to the entire international community. It demands a surge of solidarity, coherence, and accountability. It is not only Ndesho Kabwene who must be freed. It is the thousands of rural voices, scattered across displacement camps in Kivu, that must finally be heard.
By Franck Zongwe Lukama
