By Catherine Ageno<\/p>\n
Amnesty International has called for thorough and prompt investigation of the brutal crackdown on anti-government protests in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).<\/p>\n
Jean-Mobert Senga, Amnesty International\u2019s Researcher on the DRC says authorities in the country must hold to account those suspected to be responsible for killing and injuring dozens of peaceful protesters in the capital Kinshasa on 21 January.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis brutal response by the security forces to peaceful protests goes to show once again that repression has become the norm in the DRC, in blatant violation of the country\u2019s constitution and its international human rights obligations,\u201d said Jean-Mobert Senga.<\/p>\n
Thousands of peaceful protesters rallied across the country in protests called by the Catholic Church to demand that President Joseph Kabila step down ahead of elections in December.<\/p>\n
This is the second time protests have been violently repressed by the security forces in less than a month.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the rights body says\u00a0many\u00a0other protests against President Kabila\u2019s continued stay in power have also been met with heavy-handed responses over the last three years, a claim the Kinshasa government has vehemently denied.<\/p>\n
The protests were called by the Catholic Church which brokered an agreement on elections between the ruling party and the opposition in December 2016. The agreement stipulates that President Kabila shall not run in the forthcoming election.<\/p>\n
It also calls for the implementation of a number of confidence-building measures ahead of the polls including the release of political prisoners and the freedom for opposition politicians to return from exile to allow what stakeholders called \u2018inclusive, peaceful and credible elections.<\/p>\n
According to the UN\u2019s mission in the country, the protesters were countered by security forces who shot live rounds at them killing at least six and injuring at least 49.<\/p>\n
Senga adds that internet and telephone services were shut down across the country and remained cut off the next day and due to the shutdown, some injured protesters were unable to access emergency help.<\/p>\n
\u201cDue to the shutdown, some injured protesters were unable to access emergency help,\u201d said Jean-Mobert Senga<\/p>\n
e says the\u00a0flagrant disregard for people\u2019s lives and human rights is totally unacceptable, urging the\u00a0DRC authorities to\u00a0immediately restore communications and desist from cutting them off in future.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Catherine Ageno Amnesty International has called for thorough and prompt investigation of the brutal crackdown on anti-government protests in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Jean-Mobert Senga, Amnesty International\u2019s Researcher on the DRC says authorities in the country must hold to account those suspected to be responsible for killing and injuring dozens of peaceful protesters in the capital Kinshasa on 21 January. \u201cThis brutal response by the security forces to peaceful protests goes to show once again that repression has become the norm in the DRC, in blatant violation of the country\u2019s constitution and its international human rights obligations,\u201d said Jean-Mobert Senga. Thousands of peaceful protesters rallied across the country in protests called by the Catholic Church to demand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":27778,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[134,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news-news","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32897"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}