Portal:Democratic Republic of the Congo/Selected biography/4

Marcel Antoine Lihau (29 September 1931 – 9 April 1999) was a Congolese politician, jurist, and law professor.

Lihau was born in the Belgian Congo. With the help of sympathetic Jesuit educators, he attended the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium and became one of the first Congolese to study law. He served briefly as a justice official and negotiator for the Congolese central government after the country's independence, and was made dean of law faculty at Lovanium University in 1963. The following year he helped deliver the Luluabourg Constitution to the Congolese, which was adopted by referendum. In 1965 Joseph-Desiré Mobutu seized total control of the country and directed Lihau to produce a new constitution. Three years later Lihau was appointed First President of the new Supreme Court of Justice of the Congo. He retained the position, advocating for judicial independence, until his dismissal in 1975 when he refused to force a harsh sentence upon student protesters. Becoming increasingly opposed to the government, he helped found the reform-oriented Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès Social. His health in decline, Lihau sought refuge from political persecution in the United States in 1985. He died there in 1999.

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