DRC: The grim fate that awaits those deported

The plane lands at Ndjili airport, Kinshasa, in the dead of night - the better to avoid monitoring by journalists and human rights activists. Then the returning asylum seekers are led out onto the tarmac by their European escorts to be handed over to the Congolese authorities. Some will have suffered violence in the process of being deported or in the detention centre where they were held prior to the flight. Others will have been tied to the seats with scotch tape for the duration of the seven-hour journey. Most would have been prevented from using the toilet or eating. They are handed over to the offices of the Director-General of Migration (DGM), ostensibly the Congolese immigration service but, in reality, an arm of the government's security services. A file containing details of their claim for political asylum in Europe is also passed to the DGM. According to René Kabala Mushiya, an activist who works in Kinshasa with the National Human Rights Observatory, this is the moment when European governments abandon those who have claimed asylum in their countries to a state which violates human rights with impunity.