Kinshasa (AFP)

A Congolese researcher has obtained a visa that allows him to seek asylum in France after leaving the Democratic Republic of Congo where he feels worried because of his work on an alternative treatment of malaria.

Jérôme Munyangi, a 35-year-old doctor-researcher, defended the benefits of the artemisia herbal tea in a documentary broadcast in France on January 24 under the title: "Malaria business: laboratories against natural medicine?".

Mr. Munyangi obtained a three-month visa at the French embassy in the Central African Republic, AFP found the document. "It's a long-stay asylum visa, and when he gets there (in France), he will file a classic asylum application," a French diplomatic source told AFP.

A French deputy, Stephane Demilly, "intervened with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of the Interior so that the situation of Dr. Munyangi is subject to scrutiny," says a collaborator of the elected from the Somme (northern France).

The researcher arrived in the Paris region on June 18 via the Central African Republic, he explained. He says he left the Democratic Republic of Congo last March, after being detained twice in the capital, Kinshasa.

"I was flogged, beaten with rifle butts by my guards and my lawyers were forcibly evicted," he told AFP about his first detention.

The two arrests are mentioned by his lawyer in a letter dated March 21 at the "House of artemisia France", concluding: "It is not safe in the Democratic Republic of Congo".

Contacted by the AFP, this lawyer, Patrick Kitembo, said that the reason for the arrests would be a dispute over a contract between the researcher and a deposit of a pharmaceutical company.

"The contract in question does not exist, the only goal was to destabilize Dr. Munyangi and his research on alternative treatments for malaria," said the lawyer.

In the Malaria business documentary, the researcher says that a study of 1,000 patients had proven that artemisia herbal teas were more effective than conventional malaria drugs, ACTs recommended by WHO (acronym artemisinin base).

"This is where the trouble starts with conventional medicine," he said. "Patients no longer buy ACTs, we are becoming more and more troublesome."

Since 2007, WHO has passed a resolution "calling for a gradual withdrawal of artemisinin-based monotherapies from oral markets".

Malaria has killed 435,000 people, 93 percent of them in Africa, WHO estimates for 2017.

? 2019 AFP