The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Joseph Kabila

  • Congo ruling coalition wins legislative majority, constraining president-elect

    Outgoing Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila’s ruling coalition won a majority in legislative elections, a coalition official said on Saturday.

    This was in spite of opposition leader Felix Tshisekedi’s win in the presidential vote the same day.

    The result will likely undercut Tshisekedi’s ability to deliver on campaign promises to make a break with the 18-year Kabila era.

    It will also fuel suspicion that his victory, announced on Thursday, came through a backroom deal that will preserve Kabila’s influence over important ministries and the security forces.

    Kabila is due to step down in the coming days in what was meant to be Congo’s first democratic transfer of power in 59 years of independence.

    But he has signaled he intends to remain involved in politics and might run for president in 2023 when term limits no longer apply.

    The runner-up in the presidential election, Martin Fayulu, filed a fraud complaint on Saturday with Congo’s highest court to challenge the result, a campaign spokeswoman, Eve Bazaiba, told Reuters.

    Fayulu says he won in a landslide in the Dec. 30 ballot with more than 60 per cent of votes and accuses Tshisekedi of striking a deal with Kabila to be declared the winner.

    Tshisekedi’s camp denies that there was any deal with Kabila and says meetings it held with the president’s representatives after the election were meant solely to ensure a peaceful transfer of power.

    The disputed outcome threatens to reawaken violence in the huge and tumultuous central African country where millions have died during civil wars since the 1990s.

    In a tweet before filing the complaint, Fayulu wrote that the election commission CENI’s results “were invented out of whole cloth.

    I demand a hand recount of all votes for the three elections (presidential, national legislative and provincial)”.

    The court has eight days to rule, but Fayulu has already said he does not expect a favorable judgment since the court is made up of Kabila appointees.

    Earlier in the day, about 50 Republican Guard soldiers and police officers surrounded Fayulu’s residence, sending dozens of his supporters, who had been chanting against Kabila and Tshisekedi, fleeing inside, a Reuters witness said.

    Fayulu’s supporters have demonstrated in several cities since the results were announced.

    Protests in the Western city of Kikwit on Thursday turned violent, killing at least four demonstrators and two police officers.

    The parliamentary majority retained by the handful of parties in Kabila’s coalition will curtail Tshisekedi’s room for maneuver.

    Under the constitution, the majority enjoys significant powers and the president must appoint his prime minister from its ranks.

    The prime minister, in turn, must countersign presidential orders appointing or dismissing military chiefs, judges and heads of state-owned enterprises.

    Adam Chalwe, a national secretary for Kabila’s PPRD party, the biggest within the FCC coalition, told Reuters that results from the individual races announced by CENI on Saturday morning showed FCC candidates taking more than 300 out of 500 seats in the National Assembly.

    Reuters was not immediately able to confirm that independently.

    Parties in the FCC coalition accounted for about 350 seats in the previous legislature.

    The coalition’s presidential candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, finished a distant third with 24 per cent of the vote.

    Pre-election polling had shown the FCC lagging behind opposition parties in legislative races.

    Jean Jacques Mamba, a spokesman for the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) party that backs Fayulu and which polls had shown leading the legislative race, said it had won 22 seats, instead of the 40-50 it had expected.

    He accused CENI of rigging the vote using electronic voting machines. CENI officials could not be immediately reached for comment. (Reuters/NAN)

     

  • UN accuses Congo forces of targeting officials during deadly protests

    UN accuses Congo forces of targeting officials during deadly protests

    UN on Tuesday accused Congolese security agents of targeting its  during a violence that broke out during a protest on Sunday, Spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.

    Congolese security forces shot dead six people and wounded dozens more as they fired tear gas to disperse a protest in Kinshasa against President Joseph Kabila.

    Shamdasani said that 68 people were wounded and 121 arrested, and the UN had information about “a number of other killings” in protests elsewhere in the country.

    “One of those injured was a UN human rights monitor who was punched and kicked by security forces, in spite of wearing a blue UN vest with a human rights logo.

    “He is also working under the long-established UN mandate to observe demonstrations.

    “He was in the right place at the right time. He was there to monitor the protests and the conduct of the security forces in the context of the protests,” she said.

    She said after he was beaten up, the UN team came back to monitor the protest but military police fired tear gas to stop them doing their work.

    “They were targeted. “This is the UN we are talking about.

    “If security forces are going to be so brazen as to even attack the UN, then we are very concerned about the way they are going to be treating other protesters,” Shamdasani said.

    She said that the UN mission in Congo was taking up the incident with the authorities, and wanted an investigation into the killings.

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    “It is not our hope that they will investigate, it’s their obligation to investigate. It is the obligation of the government to ensure that security forces are handling protests in line with the law.”

    A Congo government spokesman was not immediately reachable to comment.

    Another UN official had said that Kabila’s refusal to step down at the end of his mandate in December 2016 has triggered a series of street protests.

    He said that has also emboldened armed rebel groups, who are starting to coalesce in opposition.

    Shamdasani said Internet and SMS services had been suspended since on Saturday night, and tear gas was fired into and around churches in Kinshasa, Goma, Kisangani, Lubumbashi and Bukavu.

    She said there were heavy deployments of security forces around places of worship in Mbandaka, Beni, Mbuji-Mayi and Butembo.

    “The Catholic church is rallying people, mobilising people to stand up for their rights.

    “This is why you’ve seen that there are attacks against churches, tear gas being fired into churches, and people prevented from going in and in some cases prevented from coming out of churches after services.”

    NAN

  • Hunger in DRC leaves 7.7m people in urgent need of food aid

    Hunger in DRC leaves 7.7m people in urgent need of food aid

    Hunger in the Democratic Republic of Congo has left 7.7 million people in urgent need of food aid and pushing the country closer to famine than it has been in a decade, food security experts said on Monday.

    Much of the rise in hunger, 1.8 million new people were added to the list, stems from escalating violence in the Kasai and Tanganyika regions, which in Kasai alone has forced 1.4 million people to flee their homes in the past year.

    The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), whose members include UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Program, said 1.5 million people are now facing “emergency” hunger
    levels.

    “Emergency” means people are forced to sell possessions and skip or reduce their meals. It is one level below a classification of famine in the IPC’s internationally-recognised five stages of hunger.

    “This is the first time in 10 years that we’re so close to level five (famine),” said Alexis Bonte, FAO’s interim representative in Congo.

    “It’s a humanitarian tsunami, but it’s a silent tsunami, that’s the problem,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

    Congo now has 3.8 million people displaced within the country, in addition to a steady flow of refugees from neighboring Burundi, Central African Republic and South Sudan.

    “It has been hidden by other crises,” Bonte said, referring to South Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria and Yemen.

    The crisis has worsened with the advance of fall armyworm, a crop-eating caterpillar that has spread to many parts of the country, including Kasai and Tanganyika, as well as by outbreaks of cholera and measles.

    The country has enough land to feed at least 1 billion people – roughly the population of Africa – and is wealthy in minerals.

    Grinding poverty and years of conflict have left many of its people chronically hungry.

    “I think the donors are really tired of funding the crisis in Congo,” Bonte said, in reference to conflicts that began in the 1990s and have affected millions of people every year since.

    UN has received a quarter of the 812.6 million dollars sought in the humanitarian appeal for Congo this year.

    He said the government needs to stabilise and reduce the conflicts, humanitarian agencies need to be able to give aid, otherwise people are more likely to resume fighting.

    “We cannot hope to make change if we abandon the people.”

    “These people deserve to live in dignity. They have suffered enough,” he said.

    Violence has escalated in Congo since President Joseph Kabila refused to step down after his mandate ended in December.

    Scott Campbell, head of Central and West Africa at the UN human rights office, said the violence had spiraled out of control with the complicity of Kabila’s government.

    Analysts fear growing fighting could spark a repeat of the conflicts seen between 1996 and 2003, mostly in the east of Congo, in which millions died, mainly from hunger and disease.

    Bonte, who has spent seven years in Congo, said the displaced, many of them women, need seeds and farming tools to become self-sufficient, ease pressure on the communities hosting them, and reduce tensions.

    When local NGOs in Chikapa, a town in Kasai region, provided farmland for some 2,000 families who had fled their homes earlier this year, and FAO gave farming equipment, they were able to harvest vegetables to eat and sell within weeks.

    “Normally in a development project, it would take a year to do this.

    “This was just a few weeks, because the ladies were desperate to do something … to escape the trauma they had suffered and … go back to dignity,” Bonte said.

  • Christian sect members attack Congo prison, free leader

    Supporters of a jailed Christian sect leader attacked the prison holding him in Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital, freeing him and about 50 other inmates early on Wednesday, the government said.

    Government spokesperson Lambert Mende said that Muanda Nsemi, a self-styled prophet and leader of the Bundu dia Kongo movement – was arrested in March after a series of deadly clashes between his supporters and police.

    Witnesses said they had heard gunfire near Makala prison at around 4 a.m. (0300 GMT) and saw prisoners wearing blue shirts with yellow collars in the streets.

    The UN warned its staff to avoid unessential movement around Kinshasa, saying the situation was calm but unpredictable.

    Soldiers stopped young men for questioning near Nsemi’s house in the city’s district of Ngaliema and arresting some of them, a Reuters witness said.

    Justice minister Alexis Thambwe told a local radio station that, aside from Nsemi, the prison’s most prominent prisoners, including political opposition leaders and soldiers convicted in the assassination of former president Laurent Kabila, had not escaped.

    The president of Bundu dia Kongo’s political wing could not be immediately reached for comment.

    Nsemi has a strong following in southwestern Congo and wants to revive the Kongo kingdom, which flourished for centuries around the mouth of the Congo River.

    Clashes between his followers and security forces have compounded wider tensions across Congo since President Joseph Kabila refused to step down when his mandate expired in December, raising fears of renewed civil conflict.

    At least six of Nsemi’s supporters were killed earlier this year during the two-week standoff at his Kinshasa residence that led to his capture.

  • UN discovers seventeen new mass graves in central Congo

     

    UN investigators on Wednesday discovered 17 new mass grave sites in central Democratic Republic of Congo, bringing the total to 40 documented in an area where the army has clashed with a local militia.

    A statement from the UN said on Wednesday that the grave sites were reportedly dug by Congolese soldiers after fighting with the Kamuina Nsapu militia in Kasai Central province in March.

    The UN said no fewer than least 74 people, including 30 children, were reported to have been killed by soldiers as a result of these clashes.

    A government spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The government has previously denied that soldiers have used disproportionate force against militia members and said the militia had dug the graves.

    The Kamuina Nsapu uprising has become the most serious threat to President Joseph Kabila, whose decision to stay in power after his mandate ran out in December stoked lawlessness in the vast central African nation.

    No fewer than 400 people have been killed in fighting in Kasai Central since last August, when Congolese forces killed the tribal militia’s leader Kamuina Nsapu, escalating the conflict.

    NAN reports that on April 4, the UN found 13 mass graves in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s central Kasai province since the beginning of March.

    This brings the number discovered since August 2016 to 23.

    The UN has been unable to examine the mass graves and cannot say if they were recently dug.

    Late in March two UN experts who were abducted after going to investigate reports of abuses in the region were found dead in shallow graves.

     

  • Congo forces killed 40 in Kabila protests – UN

    The head of the United Nations human rights agency said on Friday that Congolese security forces had killed at least 40 people and arrested 460 in protests against President Joseph Kabila this week.

    “Such high casualty figures suggest a serious disregard for the need to exercise restraint in policing demonstrations,” Reuters quoted the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, as saying in a statement.

    Protests erupted against Kabila when he failed to step down despite his mandate expiring on Tuesday.

    “Not only are soldiers participating in law enforcement operations, but all the forces involved are heavily armed and using live ammunition,” Zeid said, also noting that 107 more people had been “injured or ill-treated.”

     

  • Eight killed in Congo protest

    At least eight people were killed in Monday’s clash between Congolese police and anti-government protesters in the capital Kinshasa.

    The clash took place during a march against President Joseph Kabila’s perceived bid to extend his mandate.

    Police spokesman, Col. Pierre Mwanamputu, put the death toll at eight, including three police officers.

    At least two of them were burnt, he said, and five civilians also died.

    Reuters reported that the protest attended by thousands came amid growing local and international pressure on Kabila to step down when his mandate legally ends in December.

    The opposition accused him of plotting to extend his tenure by delaying elections that were meant to take place in November until at least next year.

    His supporters denied the charge.

  • Kerry to visit, Ethiopia, Congo DR, Angola

    Kerry to visit, Ethiopia, Congo DR, Angola

    The United States Secretary of State, Mr. John Kerry, will co-convene the Fourth Session of the U.S-African Union High-Level Dialogue during his one week visit to Africa from April 29 to May 5.

    This is contained in a statement issued by the US State Department and made available to journalists in Addis Ababa on Saturday by the American Embassy in Ethiopia.

    The statement said Kerry would visit Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola.

    According to the statement, the envoy’s visit to these countries was aimed at encouraging democratic development; promote respect for human rights, advance peace and security.

    It said the dialogue scheduled to hold in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, would discuss a range of issues on the partnership with the AU.

    It added that during the visit to Addis Ababa, Kerry would engage in dialogue with civil society organisations and young African leaders, who would shape the continent’s future.

    “While in Addis Ababa, Kerry will meet with Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom to discuss efforts to advance peace and democracy in the East Africa region.

    “He will also discuss on how to strengthen important areas of bilateral cooperation with Ethiopia,’’ the News Agency of Nigeria quoted the statement as saying on Saturday.

    The statement said Kerry would meet with President Joseph Kabila to deliberate on how his government was making progress in neutralising some of the dozens of dangerous armed groups victimising the Congolese people.

    “The objective of the meeting is to evolve measures on how to advance the DRC democratisation and long-term stability, including a timely and transparent electoral process, the statement said.

     

  • Kabila in Uganda for stalled peace talks

    THE Democratic Republic of Congo’s president, Joseph Kabila, flew into Uganda on yesterday for talks aimed at reviving a peace deal between his government and rebel fighters.

    Kinshasa and the M23 rebels failed to seal a deal last month after wrangling over what it should be called – the rebels were ready to sign a peace agreement, but Congo’s negotiators wanted to call it a declaration reflecting the rebels’ defeat.

    “I think (Kabila) wants to breathe new life into the process … Uganda would implore DRC to sign this agreement with the rebels,” Uganda government spokesman, Ofwono Opondo revealed.

    M23 are the latest incarnation of Tutsi-led insurgents who have fought Congo’s government in eastern regions near the border with Uganda and Rwanda for years, amid unrest fuelled by ethnicity, local politics and competition over land and mineral wealth.

    Kabila’s visit to Uganda, where he will meet with his Ugandan counterpart, Yoweri Museveni, comes after a 10-day tour of the main towns in eastern Congo.

    During a Nov. 26 stop in Bunia, a town in Congo’s far northeast, U.N.-backed Radio Okapi reported Kabila said he believed a solution to the dialogue with M23 could be completed by Dec. 15.

    Kabila reiterated Kinshasa’s position that Congo was seeking a statement from the rebels declaring the end of the movement. M23, however, has sought an “agreement” with the government.