The popular justice, a ‘dangerous’ practice that harms innocent people (A lawyer)

Kinshasa, November 16^th, 2025 (CPA).- The popular justice has been described as a ‘dangerous’ practice that can harm innocent people killed by the public outcry, during a discussion on Saturday with a lawyer in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). ‘We must be careful with the popular justice, because it can harm innocent people, who may be killed simply because of public outcry,’ has declared Mr Kibwe Belasamon, a barrister at the Kinshasa-Gombe Bar. He has cited the case of popular justice in District 13 in the municipality of Ndjili, in the eastern part of the Congolese capital, where the population had burned alive a suspected ‘Kuluna’ without proof, before urging the population not to break the law and to help the judicial authorities do their job better by reporting these bandits instead. He has also called on young Congolese people to abandon the path of violence and theft so as not to expose themselves to punishment. ‘I urge young people to prioritise work and earn money in a dignified manner (…). Engaging in violence and theft will ultimately lead to an agonising death. The wages of sin is death,’ he has concluded. The disadvantages of popular justice include physical violence, arbitrary punishment and the absence of legal procedure, which can lead to miscarriages of justice and reprisals. It is characterised by its non-state nature, its tendency towards violence and its lack of factual investigations, unlike state justice, which is supposed to guarantee the truth of the facts, we have learned. ACP/