This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/19/democratic-republic-congo-demonstrations-banned-police-killed-joseph-kabila-etienne-tshisekedi

The article has changed 6 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 1 Version 2
Congo authorities ban demonstrations after two policemen killed 'At least 17 dead' in Congo after police and protesters clash
(about 2 hours later)
Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have banned an opposition demonstration after two policemen died in clashes with protesters calling for President Joseph Kabila to step down. Police and demonstrators clashed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Monday, in the latest round of violence sparked by the ongoing political crisis in the troubled central African state.
Police had fired teargas to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing opposition supporters in Kinshasa on Monday as they tried to march on parliament ahead of a planned mass demonstration to demand that Kabila quit power when his mandate runs out in December. At least 17 people were reported dead in the capital, Kinshasa. Opposition leaders claimed at least four people had been shot dead by security forces while witnesses said at least one police officer was beaten to death by protesters.
A government spokesman, Lambert Mende, said that two policemen were killed in violence against the ruling party office in Kinshasa’s volatile Limete area. The DRC has suffered repeated bouts of unrest since the president, Joseph Kabila, announced that elections scheduled for later this year would be delayed.
A Catholic nun said one of the policemen had been burnt alive. Opponents say Kabila, whose second term in power expires in December, is seeking to cling to power undemocratically. His supporters say logistical and financial constraints mean it is impossible to hold fair polls immediately.
“We have now banned the demonstration,” Mende said, accusing the opposition of “targeted looting”. “These are people who had prepared to create total disorder,” he said. A witness from the Reuters news agency said police had fired into the crowd in Kinshasa, but was unable to immediately confirm if anyone was killed or wounded.
Earlier youths shouting “Kabila get out” threw stones at police on a main avenue in the heart of the city of some 10 million residents. The witness then saw protesters burning the police officer’s body. Others tore down photographs of Kabila, chanting “it’s over for you” and “we don’t want you.”
Tyres burned and plumes of smoke rose from a burning car and minibus. Bruno Tshibala, a spokesman for an opposition party, said activists had “recorded several deaths” and that he had personally seen four bodies piled up in the office of an allied faction.
The demonstrators waved the blue-and-white flags of the veteran Congolese opposition leader Étienne Tshisekedi, 83, whose movement had called for nationwide protests to demand that Kabila steps down on schedule. Kabila took office as as leader of the DRC less than two weeks after his father, Laurent, was shot by a bodyguard in the presidential palace in 2001. He was elected president in disputed polls in 2006 and again in 2011. A third term is barred by the Congolese constitution.
Kabila, who has the ruled mineral-rich DRC since 2001, is banned under the constitution from running for a third term, but he has given no sign of intending to give up his job. Western nations, including the US, have warned Kabila to stick to the election calendar.
Before the clashes, opposition activists burnt a giant poster of the president bearing a message appealing for the two sides to reach a solution to the political crisis through dialogue. Backers of Kabila and some opposition members last week announced an agreement on the timing of elections.
Youths were blocking traffic on Lumumba boulevard, a main artery, letting only journalists through. Alexis Thambwe Mwamba, justice minister, said an interim government including members of the opposition would be formed and the polls postponed until mid-2017.
A diplomatic source reported further clashes in several places on the road to the capital’s airport. “The government will be redone. We will put in place a government that we will co-manage between the presidential majority, the opposition and civil society,” Mwamba said.
France has urged Congolese authorities to ensure that any delay in holding the next presidential election was as short as possible, and called on the government to respect “public liberties, especially the right to demonstrate peacefully”. Most major opposition parties have boycotted the discussions and it appears unlikely the announced agreement will end unrest.
Kinshasa was eerily quiet and schools were deserted in several districts, with parents preferring to keep their children home for safety, and many shops were closed. One point of contention is the timing of different sets of elections. Another is the revision of the electoral roll.
The country’s second biggest city, Lubumbashi, was similarly tense, with soldiers and police out in force around public buildings and opposition neighbourhoods. Kabila loyalists say that problems with the electoral roll make it impossible to hold a fair poll later this year. The current version is thought to exclude around half of the DRC’s 45 million potential voters, including about 7 million new voters who have come of age since 2011. Independent experts have said a total revision could take between 10 and 18 months.
Protests erupted after the constitutional court ruled in May that Kabila, who took power after his father, Laurent Kabila, was assassinated, could remain in office in a caretaker capacity beyond his mandate. Increasing concern in Washington has prompted a diplomatic offensive by senior officials close to Kabila in recent weeks.
No elections have been announced and it is doubtful that a poll could be organised before the end of the year. Barnabe Kikaya Bin Karubi, who is Kabila’s chief diplomatic adviser, is currently in Washington on a “pleading mission” to Washington to press US officials not to impose sanctions against key political figures.
Tshisekedi, who returned to DRC in July after a two-year absence, is an immensely popular figure who emerged as a leading dissenting voice as far back as the 1980s, when he was a critic of the military dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. “There are two resolutions that were pending in the House to impose sanctions on Congolese officials,” Kikaya said last week.
He has now accomplished the rare feat of uniting the Congolese opposition, which has never before managed to forge a common front against Kabila, who beat Tshisekedi in the last presidential election in 2011. “My mission is to plead with American officials and to prove to them that sanctions are not a solution to help us resolve our problems.”
Kikaya denied that Kabila was seeking to stay in power and rejected accusations that the delay in the election was “purposefully engineered”.
The constitution “means a lot to him and he will not violate it”, Kikaya said.
Analysts say that whereas neighbouring strongmen Denis Sassou Nguesso in Congo-Brazzaville and Paul Kagame in Rwanda have easily pushed through constitutional changes to allow them to stand for third terms, Kabila has been unable to take such a blunt approach.
Kabila did manage to outmanoeuvre Moise Katumbi, a tycoon who was seen as a powerful challenger. Katumbi, who had built a support base in Katanga province, was forced to leave the country earlier this year to seek medical treatment. He too is lobbying foreign powers.
Observers differ over the potential for widespread conflict. The DRC’s sprawling borders reach nine other African countries, and it has been argued that an implosion in the vast nation could spark instability in its neighbours.
Others say that other regional powers have little interest in sparking a violent battle to exploit the country’s resources.
Civil wars fuelled by foreign interference killed millions of people in DRC between 1996 and 2003.
The DRC is nearly two-thirds the size of western Europe and has a population of more than 79 million. Since it won independence from Belgium in 1960, there has never been a peaceful, democratic transition of power in the country.