Child trafficking: Merci Dieu Kitambo charges Julienne Mpemba

26 February 2021

For the past two days, an interview with Julienne Mpemba has been circulating in the national media space. The aforementioned presents itself as the victim of a monumental instrumentalization. Outraged by this media outlet, Dieu-Merci Kitambo, co-founder of the NGO “Planète Junior – Les Amis de la Paix” came to our editorial office to give a completely different version of the facts.

ABCOMMUNICATION: Hello sir and can you tell us a bit about yourself?

GOD – THANK YOU KITAMBO: My name is Dieu-Merci Kitambo, I am the co-founder of the NGO “Planète Junior – Les Amis de la Paix. »

ABC: How do you know Ms. Julienne Mpemba?

DMK: Mrs. Julienne Mpemba, I know her, since she is the director of the Tumaïni Orphanage, which is here in Kinshasa. She is Congolese naturalized Belgian, for the moment she is in Belgium

ABC: How did you know each other?

DMK: In fact, she and I got to know each other through social networks, facebook. Sometimes when we carry out our activities we post photos on social networks, from Ecuador-Gemena. She saw that we are very active in protecting children, so she got in touch with me directly.

ABC: And how did you come to Kinshasa?

DMK: Well, in fact, coming to Kinshasa was at Her invitation. When she contacted me to establish a partnership, she took the opportunity to call me to come here to Kinshasa with 4 children so that they could come and spend a summer camp there for just one month.

ABC: The children of your NGO?

DMK:That's it, because we are an NGO, but we don't take in children who live with their guardians, their parents, of course. So, as she was "benevolent", then worked in the same sector as us, so the children come on vacation to Kinshasa, at the same time as us, we are going to take the opportunity to sign a contract with her. That's how she sent the money for the transport ticket through André Kundo, her driver. And we came to Kinshasa. And it was his driver who came to pick us up once at the airport. We were taken to the Centre, to the orphanage on Bandal Moullaert where the children will be accommodated while I was staying at the hotel where she (Julienne) paid for each night. She was in Belgium, then two weeks later she came to Kinshasa. When he arrived he and I met in a restaurant, and I asked her about the partnership, and she asked me to keep calm, at the same time asked me if ever with me a model-type of partnership, to which I replied that I did not have any on me, and this was not the appropriate place to bring this kind of document, she replied that she would receive me well in her office to talk about it. It happened that we never saw each other again, and in the meantime she returned to Belgium. And we exceeded the month planned for the stay, and I began to make him understand that we must return to Gemena because I have responsibilities there, I work there, in addition, the children must study. She waits for me, she would be trying to buy us the return ticket. And a week later she had returned to Kinshasa again. When she felt that Lu was putting too much pressure on her, she used a despicable trick to make me stop at the ANR on Avenue Haut Commandement, which is located just behind the Higher Institute of Commerce: he sent his driver to pick me up. that she wanted me to leave so that we could talk, once I got there, but it was the ANR office. I was tortured and intimidated there as impossible as possible.

ABC: All this happened in what year?

DMK:All that was in 2016, but during that time she was preparing to send some of our children to Belgium. At the ANR, I was released the same day around 6 p.m. Frustrated as I was, I no longer knew how to return to the hotel where I was staying because it was she (Julienne Mpemba) who paid for it. From there I took refuge with an acquaintance of mine who lived in Bandal. And she returned again to Belgium. But from a distance I continued to put pressure on him, and I was well aware that our children were already in Belgium. I tried in vain to go see the children at the orphanage, but I was not allowed to enter. Shortly after, I came across a Radio Okapi program focusing on child trafficking, and at the end, the speaker, who was from an NGO, gave his contact details. This is how I contacted him, we saw each other, and I submitted my torments to him. Together with this NGO, we went down to lodge a complaint with the police who included us during a raid on the orphanage. It was then that we discovered that of our four children, there was only one left, the other three girls were no longer there, it was through this that we were informed that they had already been sent in Belgium. The police forces recovered the child and made us understand that they had no place to lodge the little boy, so the temporary custody of this child was entrusted to the NGO which facilitated us, until this boy was able to return to Gemena while the three others were in Belgium, under a false adoption. And, the NGO that accompanied me helped me file a complaint against her (Julienne Mpemba) at the prosecutor's office. And, everywhere we went they auditioned me, but I won't tell you, this lady is from an impressive network, she was known almost everywhere, which always blocked the various legal proceedings that we initiated. And, it is from there that the idea came to us to risk another procedure, but this time via the Belgian embassy, ??for the Belgian federal parquet floor which was first busy locating the children to finally arrest Julienne Mpemba in Belgium for child trafficking. The three Congolese children from Gemena in the DRC had indeed been trafficked because they had experienced a false adoption. Julienne Mpemba was therefore imprisoned until she applied for provisional release. Belgian journalists who came across the elements of the file contacted me from there to ask to come and investigate on the spot here in the DRC on this affair. They arrived here in Kinshasa and we left together as far as Gemena where they could actually see the biological parents of the girls and there were lots of reports about it. So we took the return flight from Kinshasa. On landing, it is at the foot of the plane that the ANR agents apprehend me and the 3 Belgian journalists.

ABC: What year was that?

DMK:It was April 24, 2017. We spent the whole day at the ANR facilities, and it was on the second day that, following pressure from Belgian diplomats, the three journalists were released. And that's how I stay rotting in the premises of the ANR. I was like the embarrassing element in this affair and this lady (Julienne Mpemba) used all her network of high-placed acquaintances to crush me. There even came a Belgian rogatory commission which wrote to the ANR to question me, they came to me and, at the Palais de la Justice, I spent the whole day under interrogation. And the rogatory commission to ask the ANR the real reasons for my incarceration, they replied that I was there just for investigation reasons and that I was soon to be released. what was wrong, because I was to stay there for a total of one year and two months. And then the ANR transferred me to the Penitentiary Rehabilitation Center of Kinshasa (CPRK) where I still had to spend another 8 months. But the advantage with the CPRK, as a normal prison I finally had to be entitled to a trial from which my innocence was established in a striking way and that is how I regained my freedom. But, despite my acquittal, I still continued to receive threats and intimidation because many of our authorities at the time were directly or indirectly involved, but our local justice never deigned to hear them, in Belgium on the contrary, 9 their authorities involved in one way or another in this trafficking network were questioned and then arrested. But, Suddenly today I read Julienne Mpemba's interview through the media and I see how agitated she is, and I understand that she is agitated for nothing, and then she seeks to redeem herself in front of the community, both national and international because a lot of people let themselves be taken in by her adoption schemes until she had adopted the adoption of more than thirty children abroad, and I wonder if all these children have actually gone through normal adoption procedures. So we don't really understand the motive for his current media fuss. When she says her legal proceedings are only a set up against her, you media friends who have published that she is innocent, tell her that she at least gives you the situation of the three girls from Gemena,

ABC: Can we know the names of these children, as well as their ages?

DMK: The children were named: Samira, Jaelle and Jaketu, the youngest was 5-6 years old at the time. In addition, once in Belgium, she had to change the identities of all these children until they themselves forgot even the names given to them by their biological parents... May Julienne Mpemba not be too agitated, Belgian justice is investigating this file according to all the rules.

Since the first days of this affair we had always acted with the most total discretion, that is why we had never spoken about it to the press, but now that we are entitled to react in the media, that our authorities Congolese therefore ensure our safety, as well as that of the NGOs who are supporting me in this fight.

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