Chuma Lwanwa obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2013/dec/30/chuma-lwanwa-obituary

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My friend Chuma Lwanwa, who has died aged 63, arrived in London as a refugee in 1981. He had then just ended a three-year term in prison in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) for speaking out against the 1977 arrest of his cousin, a prominent politician and traditional leader of the kingdom of Bushi, near the Congo's border with Rwanda.

Chuma left home young to study at the Royal Cadet School in Brussels, following which he graduated from the Belgian Royal Military Academy. He joined the Zairean army as a young tank regiment officer in the mid-1970s, part of a new generation of high-flyers trained in military schools in Belgium, France, Israel and the United States.

He soon learned that the different countries had imbued their trainees with different values. He saw the effects of this the first time he went into action, when President Mobutu Sese Seko's army invaded Angola in support of Holden Roberto and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA). They were driven back, but not before Chuma's driver was captured and disappeared while being held in Angolan custody.

These young officers were perceived to be a threat by Mobutu's generals and were gradually culled, with 13 of Chuma's close acquaintances brought to the same secret jail where he was being held. They were taken out and shot by firing squad in March 1978. Chuma's own punishment involved being given a severe beating each time he was fed a proper meal, before he was eventually transferred to a military prison.

On arrival in the UK, Chuma was supported by Amnesty International and completed a doctorate at Sussex University, about Belgium's relations with the United Nations after the second world war. He started working for the UN in 1993 and took part in a short-lived human rights mission in Haiti, before being recruited by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to develop a human rights programme for the military.

Later in life, Chuma worked in UN missions in Sierra Leone and, until his retirement last year, Ivory Coast. He returned to Kinshasa only once after Mobutu's government was ousted in 1997, horrified to recognise almost nothing and nobody in the capital.

Like other refugees, Chuma was a splendid ambassador for the country that gave him asylum and an ardent anglophone.

He is survived by his sister, Agnes.

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