Soldiers carry out mass arrests in DR Congo’s second city

Lubumbashi / AFP

Soldiers sealed part of DR Congo’s second city and carried out mass arrests of young men on Thursday, residents said, as talks to defuse the country’s explosive political crisis were set to continue. Protests and deadly clashes have erupted in the vast country over President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to step down at the end of his mandate on December 20.
The army sealed off the Matshipisha-Gbadolite neighbourhood of Lubumbashi from 5am , five residents of the city said. The governor of Haut-Katanga province, Jean-Claude Kazembe, was forced to flee as stones were thrown at him when he tried to visit Matshipisha on a “peace march” aimed at demonstrating that the authorities were in control there following deadly violence on Tuesday.
Total of 22 people were killed Tuesday in clashes in the capital Kinshasa, Lubumbashi in the southeast, and Matadi and Boma in the west. They said eight of the deaths were in Matshipisha, where 47 people were also injured. Human Rights Watch has placed the total death toll at 26. “The army has sealed off the district and carried out arrests” of young men and adolescents, said one resident.“There are soldiers all along the road” that surrounds the neighbourhood, a resident of an adjacent district said by telephone, adding that soldiers could be seen “going house to house looking for young people”. “They arrest all men, with or without identity documents. They put them in trucks to take them off in an unknown direction,” another resident said, adding that two adolescents and a young man were arrested in his area. “I saw three trucks filled with young people,” said another resident.
A demonstration of several dozen people, representing families of those detained, formed outside the Lubumbashi headquarters of the UN’s MONUSCO force to protest the “arbitrary arrests”.