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DRC troops fire teargas to quell protests about election delay DRC protests about election delay violently put down
(about 4 hours later)
Security forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have fired live rounds and teargas to disperse demonstrators who burned tires and allegedly attacked Ebola centres in a protest against a decision to exclude them from the presidential election. Congolese security forces have violently put down protests that broke out after the country’s presidential election was postponed by three months in key opposition strongholds.
The electoral commission (CENI) announced on Wednesday that it was cancelling voting in the election on Sunday in the eastern cities of Beni and Butembo, and their surrounding areas, because of a continuing Ebola outbreak and militia violence. In the eastern city of Beni, armed men fired live rounds and teargas at protesters demonstrating against the changes on Thursday. Protesters allegedly attacked the office of the agency coordinating the Ebola response and invaded an isolation centre, causing dozens of patients to flee.
The areas are strongholds of opposition to the outgoing president, Joseph Kabila, and local politicians denounced the move as an effort to swing the vote in favour of his preferred candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary. The latest electoral delay in Africa’s second-biggest country will exclude more than 1.2 million people from the 30 December vote and is expected to favour the ruling party and its candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, handpicked by the incumbent, Joseph Kabila.
Giscard Yere, a Beni resident, said: “There was a group of demonstrators who wanted to enter the CENI office … to demand the withdrawal of the decision. But the police officers and soldiers who were there fired to disperse the demonstrators.” On Wednesday the national electoral commission (CENI) announced a delay of the vote in Beni, Butembo and Yumbi and surrounding rural areas until March, long after the new president is due to be sworn in.
Protesters ransacked an Ebola isolation centre in Beni and it is possible patients fled, said Aruna Abedi, the deputy director of the Ebola response. The commission blamed the DRC’s devastating outbreak of Ebola and potential terrorist attacks for the delay, which may lead to votes in the three affected areas not being counted in the election.
They also attacked the office of the government agency coordinating the response in Beni before UN peacekeepers pushed them back, Abedi added. “Protesters tried to force the door of the centre,” he said. “They were chanting songs hostile to the government and demanding elections. They threw projectiles.” “Elections lead to important movements of voters toward polling places, thus leading to concentrations of people … raising the risk of propagation of this disease and providing the conditions for terrorist attacks,” the CENI said in a statement.
Col Safari Kazingufu, the police commander in Beni, said his forces had deployed across the city to restore order, including around Ebola treatment centres. The health ministry had previously said the Ebola outbreak, which has killed 354 people in eastern Congo and is the second largest to date, would not prevent the vote from going ahead.
Beni, Butembo and the rural areas around them have been dealing with an Ebola outbreak – now the second-deadliest on record – since August, but health authorities had repeatedly said it would not prevent the vote from going ahead. The election was due to be held on 23 December nationwide, but was postponed by a week. Many Congolese voters who travelled from neighbouring countries to cast their ballots had to leave before they could do so.
The CENI also cancelled the vote in the western city of Yumbi because of ethnic violence there last week that killed more than 100 people. The government has not explained how it will take account of the delayed votes in Beni, Butembo and Yumbi.
The election to replace Kabila, who has governed since replacing his assassinated father in 2001, was scheduled to take place in 2016 but has been repeatedly delayed. Election campaigning in DRC – in pictures
The delay triggered violent protests in which security forces killed dozens of people. It also stoked militia violence in DRC’s eastern borderlands with Rwanda and Uganda, as armed groups moved to exploit a perceived power vacuum. Kabila, who came to power after his father was assassinated in 2001, won elections in 2006 and 2011. But when his mandate expired in 2016 and he was prevented by the constitution from running again, he did not step down. Instead the CENI announced it had not held a census to find out how many voters there were and did not have the $1bn (£790m) it said it needed to conduct an election.
Shadary is facing two main challengers in a field of 21 candidates: Félix Tshisekedi, the president of DRC’s largest opposition party, and Martin Fayulu, a former ExxonMobil manager and national lawmaker. Opposition leaders said Kabila was behind the decision to postpone the election, and this was buttressed by a constitutional court ruling that he would stay on as president in the event of electoral delays.
Shadary, who is accused of obstructing the electoral process and of serious human rights abuses, is one of 14 senior officials the EU has placed under sanctions for three years running. On Thursday the Congolese foreign ministry announced it would expel the bloc’s ambassador, Bart Ouvry, in response to the EU’s decision to renewthe sanctions two weeks ago despite a plea from the African Union to drop them.
Meanwhile, the opposition to Shadary is shaky. Two major political leaders were excluded from the election on technicalities, and the remaining opposition has failed to unite around a single candidate. The two main candidates are Martin Fayulu, a former oil executive, and Félix Tshisekedi, son of the late Étienne Tshisekedi, Kabila’s old foe and a popular stalwart of the opposition.
'This is hell': devastated Congolese village embodies country's crisis
Millions of Congolese are struggling to survive. Five million have been displaced and 13 million are in need of help after decades of conflict. Hundreds of armed groups contribute to the instability in the east, while people in Kasai are struggling to recover from the 2016 conflict between government forces and the Kamuina Nsapu movement.
Analysts say business interests are behind what has been framed as an inter-communal conflict in the province of Ituri. Insecurity is preventing health workers from getting to many areas with suspected Ebola cases, leading to more infections.
The epidemic of rape, which activists say began in the mid-1990s, has continued unabated throughout Kabila’s presidency; in October the new Nobel peace prize winner Denis Mukwege told the Guardian he held the president personally responsible for not protecting the country’s women, along with his “illegal and illegitimate” government.
Democratic Republic of the CongoDemocratic Republic of the Congo
ProtestProtest
AfricaAfrica
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