Parents of slain UN worker seek justice for their son, peace for the Congo
Michael J. Sharp had been investigating violence in the Congo when he was killed one year ago.
When their son Michael J. Sharp disappeared in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in March 2017, John and Michele Sharp took on the role of bearing witness to his life and work.
A Mennonite Christian, he had worked with the Program for Peace and Reconciliation of the Church of Christ in Congo, an association of more than 60 Protestant denominations known by its French abbreviation ECC, which worked with militia leaders in Eastern Congo and encouraged them to allow soldiers, including children, to be allowed to leave the forest and go home.
More recently, Sharp had taken a job with the United Nations as the leader of a six-person group of experts on the Congo. He went missing while doing an investigation. March 27, 2017, his body and that of Zaida Catalán, a Swedish-Chilean expert on sex crimes, were found in a shallow grave in the Central Kasai region. Government officials blamed the deaths on a militia group that the two had been on their way to meet. Many others say the government or people with ties to it were responsible.
