Congolese hope election paves way for EU visa access

La Maison Schengen in Kinshasa helped Congolese citizens with EU visas but was closed last year.

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo — Citizens in the Democratic Republic of Congo have pinned their hopes on the recently held presidential election to pave the way for renewing visa access to the EU.

On Thursday, Congo’s electoral commission CENI announced opposition candidate Felix Tshisekedi as winner of the presidential poll held on December 30, making way for the country’s first uncontested transfer of power in its nearly 60 years of independence.

Click Here: liverpool mens jersey

But both the Catholic Church and another opposition leader, Martin Fayulu, have contested those results, setting up an uneasy aftermath to the vote. Reuters reported that Fayulu will lode an election fraud complaint Saturday to formerly contest the result, saying he in fact won 60 percent of votes.

Whether the results stand or not will have a significant impact on an institution that was shut down by the Congolese government in January last year. La Maison Schengen in Kinshasa helped Congolese citizens travel to 18 countries in the EU by issuing visas for the Schengen area, but the government closed it in retaliation to European sanctions against senior Congolese officials. The action lead to scores of people in the African country being denied visas.

The measure, which was in retaliation against EU sanctions in 2016 and 2017 over violent crackdowns on protesters and repeated delays to the election, has had most impact on Congolese citizens, with a long list of researchers, students, medical patients and others unable to travel to the EU.

Dieudonné Molamba, a 58-year-old doctor who travels to the EU to attend academic conferences and pursue his research on prostate cancer, has had his visits curtailed as a result of the shutdown. His visa giving access to the Schengen area ran out in November.

“The shutting down of the Maison Schengen brings about serious consequences, particularly in the area of research and in general for those who work in universities. I am not the only one. There are many who have been affected by this,” Molamba said.

“The world today is a spider web. No country in the world can pretend to evolve alone.”

Molamba said he had tried to gain access to a France-only visa via the French Embassies in Democratic Republic of Congo and Brazzaville, the capital of the former French colony Republic of the Congo. He also said he had encountered numerous medical patients in recent months wanting to go to the EU for medical treatment who had hit a brick wall.

Barnabe Kikaya Bin Karubi, one of Congo’s incumbent President Joseph Kabila’s top advisers, told POLITICO in an interview that the Maison Schengen would not be opened again “in its current form.”

“We don’t think it’s in the interests of anyone to reopen the Maison Schengen as it has worked up until now. Its reopening will be a subject of intense negotiation between the European Union and us.,” he said. “The European Union has in a cavalier way sanctioned our officials, which we find is extremely unfriendly and irresponsible.”

Kikaya said that Congolese citizens, if they want to go to Europe, should contact national EU Embassies in order to have a visa. “If someone needs to go in three different countries [inside the EU] one must go to three embassies.”

The hope among Congolese who wish to obtain travel permits for the EU is that the position changes with the new government. A spokesperson for Tshisekedi did not respond to repeated calls.

An EU spokesperson declined to comment but referred to a statement released last year saying the decision to suspend the activities of the Maison Schengen risks “undermining the collective effort on behalf of the Congolese people.”