France24<\/p>\n
Security forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo\u2019s capital Kinshasa shot dead an anti-government protester and wounded two others who had gathered to take part in church-led marches against President Joseph Kabila\u2019s rule on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Catholic and evangelical church-goers across Congo had been meant to take to the streets following Sunday services, but armed security forces surrounded Kinshasa\u2019s main churches and blocked roads, preventing most demonstrations from getting started.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere at the St. Fran\u00e7ois Church, when people gathered to start walking, the police dispersed the crowd using tear gas,\u201d said FRANCE 24’s Thomas Nicolon, reporting from Kinshasa.<\/span><\/p>\n The death and woundings occurred in different locations in Kinshasa, but all the victims were taken to Kinshasa\u2019s St. Joseph Hospital where they were seen by a Reuters reporter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In power since 2001,\u00a0Kabila\u00a0<\/a>struck a deal in December 2016 with the main opposition bloc to stay on after his elected mandate expired on the condition elections were held by the end of 2017.<\/p>\n Government authorities missed that deadline and the vote is now scheduled for this December. However, election officials have hinted that polls may not even be possible then because of financial and logistical constraints.<\/p>\n \u201cOur people no longer believe in the political will of our current leaders to ensure a peaceful transition of power,\u201d one of the main organising groups wrote in a statement ahead of the march.<\/p>\n \u201cThe big thing that\u2019s changing the game is that the Catholic Church is not neutral anymore. The Catholic Church is asking people to march and to ask Joseph Kabila to step down,\u201d said Nicolon.<\/p>\n Church groups<\/a>\u00a0have become the main opposing force to Kabila as political opposition parties have been hobbled by in-fighting or have seen their leaders forced into exile.<\/p>\n As with previous protest marches, Internet, mobile data and phone messaging were all cut across Congo early on Sunday.<\/p>\n Security forces killed about a dozen civilians during two\u00a0previous marches<\/a>\u00a0in the past two months organised by Catholic activists in crackdowns that stoked fears Congo could be sliding back toward the wars of the turn of the century in which millions died.<\/p>\n Kinshasa police commissioner General Sylvano Kasongo had announced a goal of \u201czero deaths\u201d during a review of police on Saturday.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s our population, our countrymen that we are protecting. I told the policemen not to fire on the population, which is a civilian population that isn\u2019t armed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The question now is whether people will try to march again. \u201cPeople might want to march no matter the attitude of the police,\u201d said Nicolon.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" France24 Security forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo\u2019s capital Kinshasa shot dead an anti-government protester and wounded two others who had gathered to take part in church-led marches against President Joseph Kabila\u2019s rule on Sunday. Catholic and evangelical church-goers across Congo had been meant to take to the streets following Sunday services, but armed security forces surrounded Kinshasa\u2019s main… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[43,44,45],"class_list":["post-1439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-dr-congo","tag-joseph-kabila","tag-protest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1440,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439\/revisions\/1440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}