Annie Chebeya Mangbenga
Annie Chebeya Mangbenga is an emerging human rights activist and the widow of Floribert Chebeya Bahizire, the president of the leading Congolese human rights NGO, Voix des Sans-Voix (Voice of the Voiceless). She was born and raised in Kinshasa, where she first met Floribert in 1991 and married him a year later. Together, they had four children and adopted two others. She also ran a small store selling refrigerated food but, after five years, abandoned the initiative because of infrequent electricity in the city. In 2009, she bought some fields in Equateur province to help her family become more self-reliant.
On June 1, 2010, Floribert went to the police station in Kinshasa to honor a meeting with the police commissioner. At 5:25pm, he sent a text message to Annie saying that he had just arrived. It was the last time she heard from her husband. After a night of repeatedly trying to reach him or his driver by phone, she learned that his body was lying at the morgue. After that, she and her six children moved to North America, where they have started a new life. Since then, she has since fought tirelessly to learn the entire truth of the death of her husband and his driver, Fidele Bazana. In June 2011, a military tribunal sentenced four of the defendants to death in the case. The police commissioner, who is considered by many as the prime suspect, has never been charged and the case is now under appeal.
