The nine were "from Lucha," said Lisangi
Nkumu, Beni's deputy police chief, referring to a pro-democracy group,
Struggle for Change, which is campaigning for Kabila to leave office.
"They
were demonstrating on the public highway without authorisation," he
said. "They are being interviewed and will be handed over to the
appropriate authorities."
Lucha
campaigner Regina Masinda said that the police intervened shortly after
the start of the march and "brutally" manhandled demonstrators who had
their hands in the air and had sat down on the ground.
"Nine of us were arrested," Masinda said. "We demand their release."
On Monday, clashes in the nearby city of Goma left four civilians and a policeman dead, an AFP reporter said.
Twenty-eight people were arrested, two of them women, the police for North Kivu province said.
On
Tuesday police sources said the 28 would be handed over to a military
tribunal where they would face charges including "illegal possession of
weapons".
"We have finished the
questioning," Colonel Georges Kitungwa said, while an AFP reporter saw
the suspects being loaded into a police vehicle.
"It's up to the military tribunal to judge these violations."
Political tensions in the DRC are high after
Kabila failed to step down on the expiry of his second and final term
last December.
Elections were due to
take place this year under a transitional deal reached last New Year's
Eve with the help of the Roman Catholic Church.
But
the country's electoral commission says there will no vote before early
2019, mainly because of the problems of completing an electoral roll in
the troubled central region of Kasai.
The uncertainty has stoked fears of a new
eruption of political violence in a vast, poor country already
struggling with ethnic divisions and fighting in its east.
Demonstrations have been banned or widely repressed since September 2016.
0 comments:
Post a Comment