Gunfire
rang out on Wednesday at a student demonstration in Kinshasa during a
third day of violence over controversial legislation that would extend
President Joseph Kabila’s term in office, with international concern
mounting over the crisis
Two shots were heard as dozens of students shouting “Kabila get out!” faced off against a small group of police officers at Kinshasa’s university amid sporadic confrontations.
In another neighbourhood, youths destroyed a police vehicle and police fired teargas in an attempt to disperse the protesters.
Protesters oppose a draft law that would enable Kabila, who has been in power for 14 years, to extend his stay in office beyond 2016, when his second term ends.
The fresh violence came as the European Union called for calm and respect for the country’s election timetable.
Twenty-eight people have been killed since Monday in anti-government protests, according to a local human rights organisation. The authorities put the latest death toll at five.
“This morning we’re working all out again because there is a students’ protest at the university,” police spokesperson Israel Mutumbo said. “We are in the process of checking across the city because there are little groups [of possible demonstrators] forming.”
Burning and lootingOn Tuesday, hundreds of youths torched a town hall in Ngaba, a southern neighbourhood of Kinshasa, while several inmates escaped from a neighbouring prison. Looters made off with police weapons stored at the site.
The army and police arrested at least 20 people as protesters pelted state buildings, public buses and passing cars with rocks. Soldiers fired into the air to scare off looters who had targeted a Chinese-owned store.
The EU on Wednesday urged all parties to show restraint.
“All sides should seek a consensus allowing a return to calm,” it said, adding that “respect of the electoral calendar as fixed by the Constitution is central to the debate”.
“The European Union expects publication of a complete calendar including legislative and presidential elections in line with the Constitution,” it said.
Opposition parties in the biggest, most populous central African country have called for mass demonstrations against the new electoral bill being debated in the Senate.
Speaking from Belgium on Tuesday, Democratic Republic of Congo opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi called on the Congolese people to force a “dying regime” from power.
Tshisekedi (82), who is recovering from illness in Europe, has been in opposition since the 1960s, previously taking on the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko as well as Kabila’s father, Laurent-Desire Kabila.
Call for calm“The sham regime in Kinshasa is constantly committing irresponsible acts of provocation, plunging the nation into a total impasse that could lead to widespread chaos,” he said.
He called on Congolese soldiers and police to “protect citizens and not to obey perverse orders aimed at killing defenceless men and women.”
Kabila, now 43, is the son of former president Laurent Kabila, who as a rebel leader in 1997 toppled strongman General Joseph-Desire Mobutu.
The younger Kabila first came to power in January 2001, when Kinshasa politicians rushed to make the young soldier head of state after the assassination of his father.
He was returned to office in 2006 in the DRC’s first free election since independence from Belgium in 1960. He began his second and last five-year constitutional term after a hotly disputed vote in 2011.
His opponents say Kabila wants to prolong his mandate by making the presidential and parliamentary elections contingent on the new electoral roll emerging from a census across the vast mineral-rich country that is scheduled to begin this year.
The government has acknowledged that the census could delay elections scheduled for the end of 2016, but regional analysts and diplomats estimate that the process could take up to three years. – AFP
Two shots were heard as dozens of students shouting “Kabila get out!” faced off against a small group of police officers at Kinshasa’s university amid sporadic confrontations.
Protesters oppose a draft law that would enable Kabila, who has been in power for 14 years, to extend his stay in office beyond 2016, when his second term ends.
The fresh violence came as the European Union called for calm and respect for the country’s election timetable.
Twenty-eight people have been killed since Monday in anti-government protests, according to a local human rights organisation. The authorities put the latest death toll at five.
“This morning we’re working all out again because there is a students’ protest at the university,” police spokesperson Israel Mutumbo said. “We are in the process of checking across the city because there are little groups [of possible demonstrators] forming.”
Burning and lootingOn Tuesday, hundreds of youths torched a town hall in Ngaba, a southern neighbourhood of Kinshasa, while several inmates escaped from a neighbouring prison. Looters made off with police weapons stored at the site.
The army and police arrested at least 20 people as protesters pelted state buildings, public buses and passing cars with rocks. Soldiers fired into the air to scare off looters who had targeted a Chinese-owned store.
The EU on Wednesday urged all parties to show restraint.
“All sides should seek a consensus allowing a return to calm,” it said, adding that “respect of the electoral calendar as fixed by the Constitution is central to the debate”.
“The European Union expects publication of a complete calendar including legislative and presidential elections in line with the Constitution,” it said.
Opposition parties in the biggest, most populous central African country have called for mass demonstrations against the new electoral bill being debated in the Senate.
Speaking from Belgium on Tuesday, Democratic Republic of Congo opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi called on the Congolese people to force a “dying regime” from power.
Tshisekedi (82), who is recovering from illness in Europe, has been in opposition since the 1960s, previously taking on the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko as well as Kabila’s father, Laurent-Desire Kabila.
Call for calm“The sham regime in Kinshasa is constantly committing irresponsible acts of provocation, plunging the nation into a total impasse that could lead to widespread chaos,” he said.
He called on Congolese soldiers and police to “protect citizens and not to obey perverse orders aimed at killing defenceless men and women.”
Kabila, now 43, is the son of former president Laurent Kabila, who as a rebel leader in 1997 toppled strongman General Joseph-Desire Mobutu.
The younger Kabila first came to power in January 2001, when Kinshasa politicians rushed to make the young soldier head of state after the assassination of his father.
He was returned to office in 2006 in the DRC’s first free election since independence from Belgium in 1960. He began his second and last five-year constitutional term after a hotly disputed vote in 2011.
His opponents say Kabila wants to prolong his mandate by making the presidential and parliamentary elections contingent on the new electoral roll emerging from a census across the vast mineral-rich country that is scheduled to begin this year.
The government has acknowledged that the census could delay elections scheduled for the end of 2016, but regional analysts and diplomats estimate that the process could take up to three years. – AFP
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