Human Rights Watch (Washington, DC)
21 December 2011
press release
Kinshasa — Congolese security forces have killed at least 24 people and arbitrarily detained dozens more since President Joseph Kabila was announced the winner of the disputed presidential elections on December 9, 2011, Human Rights Watch said today.
The government should immediately halt attacks and arbitrary arrests against opposition supporters and local residents by security forces in an apparent effort to prevent any protest of disputed election results.
Those killed include opposition activists and supporters as well as people gathered on the street or even in their homes, Human Rights Watch found. Human Rights Watch has received dozens of reports of other killings and attacks by security forces which it is seeking to confirm and is continuing its investigations.
“Since Joseph Kabila was declared the winner of the presidential election, security forces have been firing on small crowds, apparently trying to prevent protests against the result,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “These bloody tactics further undermine the electoral process and leave the impression that the government will do whatever it takes to stay in power.”
Kabila, the incumbent, was inaugurated in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, on December 20 following an election that international and national election observers strongly criticized as lacking credibility and transparency. The Kabila-appointed Supreme Court on December 16 rejected the opposition’s contention that the vote should be annulled because of fraud allegations.
The incidents of post-election abuse by security forces were documented by seven Human Rights Watch staff working with 17 Congolese human rights activists trained as election observers and deployed across the country. Human Rights Watch interviewed 86 victims, family members, and other witnesses, in addition to gathering information from other sources.
Human Rights Watch received numerous accounts of incidents in which members of the Republican Guard presidential security detail, the police, and other security forces fired on groups of people in the street who may have been protesting the election result, were preparing to protest, or were simply bystanders. In other incidents, suspected opposition supporters were targeted and killed.
At least 24 people were killed by security forces between December 9 and 14, including 20 in Kinshasa, two in North Kivu, and two in Kasai Occidental province. Human Rights Watch also documented an incident in which local youth in Kinshasa threw rocks at a priest who later died from his injuries.
Police and other security forces appear to be covering up the scale of the killings by quickly removing the bodies. Several sources informed Human Rights Watch that the government had instructed hospitals and morgues not to provide information about the number of dead or any details about individuals with bullet wounds to family members, human rights groups, or United Nations personnel, among others. Some family members have found the bodies of their loved ones in morgues far outside of Kinshasa, indicating that bodies are being taken to outlying areas.
The security forces have also forcibly blocked attempts by opposition groups to organize peaceful protests against election irregularities and arrested a number of the organizers on spurious charges of threatening state security, Human Rights Watch found. The Republican Guard, which is not empowered to arrest civilians, has apprehended opposition supporters and detained them in illegal places of detention at Camp Tshatshi, the guard’s Kinshasa base, and at the Palais de Marbre, a presidential palace. Some of the detainees were mistreated.
“The callous shooting of peaceful demonstrators and bystanders by the security forces starkly illustrates the depths the government will reach to suppress dissenting voices,” Van Woudenberg said. “The UN and Congo’s international partners should urgently demand that the government rein in its security forces.”
The Republican Guard is a force of some 12,000 soldiers whose primary task is to guard the president. Under Congolese law, the Republican Guard has no authority to arrest civilians, to detain them or to provide security for the elections. Congo’s police are responsible for providing security and ensuring public order during the elections. The national police chief, Gen. Charles Bisengimana, can call on the regular Congolese army, not the Republican Guard, to provide assistance if his force is unable to control public order.
Bisengimana told Human Rights Watch that he had not called on the army for any help with maintaining public order in Kinshasa and did not foresee any need to do so in the near future. He could not explain to Human Rights Watch why Republican Guard soldiers were so widely deployed across Kinshasa, including in places where there were no presidential installations for them to guard. He added that the Republican Guard was not under his authority or control.
“The Republican Guard has no authority to arrest Congolese civilians and hold them at illegal places of detention,” Van Woudenberg said. “The government should order the immediate release of all detainees in their custody, and undertake an impartial investigation into responsibility for these unlawful arrests and the mistreatment of detainees.”
Background
Killings in Kinshasa
Politically motivated attacks by the security forces following the election have been most severe in Kinshasa, where the leading opposition candidate, Etienne Tshisekedi of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) party, did very well at the polls.
Congolese security forces, including the Republican Guard and the police, were deployed in large numbers across the city ahead of the December 9 announcement of provisional election results by the independent electoral commission, the CENI. Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that on that day and ensuing days, these forces fired randomly at small crowds of people who had gathered and others who attempted to leave their homes. Forces also fired on individuals suspected of looting. In some incidents, security forces specifically targeted and killed suspected opposition supporters. The attacks occurred in the communes of Ngaliema, Ngiri Ngiri, Kinsenso, Selembao, Lemba, Kalamu, Limete, and Kimbanseke in Kinshasa, killing at least 20 people, including 4 boys, 5 women, and 11 men, and wounding many others.
Soon after the election results were announced on December 9, a crowd of people gathered in the streets to protest in Barré neighborhood, Ngaliema commune. At around 5 pm, the police came and fired at the crowd to disperse the protesters. As people scattered, some took refuge outside the home of Fany Nsimba, a 21-year-old woman. When Nsimba and her 8-year-old niece came outside to see what was happening, they were both shot by the police. Nsimba died minutes later. Her niece is still hospitalized, recovering from a bullet wound in her thorax.
In Kimbanseke commune on the morning of December 10, local youth set up barricades on one of the main avenues following the announcement that Kabila had won the elections. When the police came to remove the roadblocks, some of the protesters threw rocks at them. The police responded by firing tear gas and live ammunition at the protesters and other passersby. A 15-year-old boy who had left his house to pick up his cell phone which was charging, and who some witnesses said had a rock in his hand, was shot dead. Another 30-year-old bus driver was also shot dead.
Angry at the heavy-handed response of the police, a group of youth broke into and burned a nearby police station, stealing weapons and furniture. Into the afternoon, the police continued to fire live ammunition at protesters in Kimbanseke and even down the smaller streets off the main avenue where the roadblocks had been set up. A 45-year-old mother of seven, who had poked her head outside the door to make sure none of her children were outside, was shot dead by a stray bullet.
In the days that followed, the police used the raid on the police station as a pretext for nightly raids in the neighborhood, going door-to-door and randomly arresting youth and stealing phones and money as they searched for the stolen weapons.
In Bandalungwa commune in the late afternoon of December 9, police fired into a crowd of people on Kimbondo Avenue who were protesting Kabila’s announced victory. At least two people suffered bullet wounds. The next morning, a 13-year-old boy, Bijou Luvuwala, was standing outside his house in the Kimbangu neighborhood, Kalamu commune, when the police drove by and fatally shot him.
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