Police used clubs and tear gas to break up a political demonstration in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Tuesday that left several opposition supporters gravely injured, journalists and witnesses said.
One protester lost his hand when a tear-gas canister exploded, according to eyewitness reports received by United Nations observers in the country.
Other reports said police clubbed some protesters while trying to disperse a rally near Kinshasa’s central station of about 300 people calling for greater transparency in the electoral process.
The demonstration had been called by several candidates in the presidential election scheduled for July 30. They urged people to denounce what they claimed was ”massive fraud” within the independent electoral commission (CEI).
Jean-Claude Vuemba, the leader of a small opposition party, condemned ”the unacceptable behaviour of the security forces”, who he claimed fired in the air. He said one person had been killed, although neither police nor hospital sources confirmed this.
”There were some people injured but no deaths to my knowledge,” said General Patrick Sabiki, a provincial police inspector in Kinshasa, adding that an injury toll would be released later on Tuesday.
Police said the march was not authorised, but organisers said they had indicated their plans to the governor and were not required to obtain permission during the election campaign period.
Voters will go to the polls on July 30 for the vast country’s first parliamentary and presidential elections in more than four decades.
Two presidential contenders, Gerard Kamanda wa Kamanda, current Minister of Scientific Research, and former rebel leader Roger Lumbala, took part in the demonstration.
”The CEI must correct the errors that we have denounced,” said Kamanda wa Kamanda. He demanded the destruction of five million ”extra ballots” that the CEI has said are a reserve supply.
The protesters also targeted current President Joseph Kabila, calling him a ”foreigner” and decrying the support he enjoys within the international community.
Kabila, the son of late DRC president Laurent Kabila, hails from the east of the country but spent most of his formative and early adult years in neighbouring Tanzania.
In a separate political meeting on Tuesday in the south-eastern region of Katanga, opposition candidate Joseph Olenghankoy criticised certain unnamed Congolese for aiding foreigners to ”pillage the country’s natural wealth, especially in Katanga”.
The attack is thought to have referred to Kabila, whose family hails from Katanga, a region rich in copper and precious minerals where foreign firms have in recent years won mining contracts that offer particularly attractive taxation rates.
Olenghankoy, the head of the Innovative Forces for Union and Solidarity party, urged voters in the town of Kamina to cast their ballots for him in order to ”clean up the macroeconomic situation in the country”, his campaign director said. — Sapa-AFP