In the same press release, and according to Ida Sawyer of HRW, "Another video shows an unarmed girl bleeding on the ground outside the governor's office in Kananga, capital of Central Kasai province. Men are heard interrogating her and refusing to take her to the hospital. They kick her twice in the face. A witness later told France 24 that soldiers shot her on January 27, the day the video was filmed, and that she died later that day. He also saw at least three other dead bodies."
This uptick in violence (it never really ends in eastern Congo) flows from increasing instability after President Joseph Kabila refusal to honor his constitutional mandate to step down in December 2016. He remains in power through a fragile peace deal, brokered by the Catholic Church\. The accord bars Kabila from trying to change the constitution so he can run for a third term in an election scheduled for late 2017.
"The UN documented a total of 480 victims of extrajudicial killings by state agents, an increase of 63 percent compared to 2015. Many of these victims were shot dead by security forces during the violent crackdown on protests against efforts to extend President Joseph Kabila's stay in power beyond the end of his constitutionally mandated two-term limit on December 19, 2016, according to a report by HRW.
In fact, the U.N. Joint Human Rights Office has documented the killings of more than 280 people since July. At least 39 women were among the victims killed amid the violence between February 9 and 13, according to the U.N.'s human rights spokeswoman Liz Throssell.
"There are multiple, credible allegations of massive human rights violations in Kasai, Kasai Central, Kasai Oriental and Lomami provinces, amid a sharp deterioration in security situation there, including people being targeted by soldiers for their alleged affiliation with a local militia," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein.
Monusco reported the August killings in Kasai of followers of Mwami (Chief ) Kamwena Nsapu by FARDC. Governor Alex Kande described the victims, including the dead Mwami Kamwena as "terrorists." Now understand that anytime there is an uprising against the Kabila regime, the militias supporting local villagers are termed "terrorists."
So who was Mwami Kamwena Nsapu, and why have over 100 of his followers been killed in central and eastern Congo in recent months? The Mwami was a Physician in South Africa before succeeding to his brother as a chief near Kananga, the capital of West Kasai Province. He fought against the centralization of power in Kinshasa and wanted to promote social justice for his people. Social justice is a non-starter in the regime of Joseph Kabila.
The Coordinator of the Congolese Human Rights Observatory (OCDH) in Central Kasai, Hubert Ngulandjoko, condemned the killing of Kamwina Nsapu, saying human rights were violated, especially with the desecration and public "trophy" viewing of the body. Violating the home of the Mwami is also a cultural taboo, and "it would have been desirable to arrest Kamwina Nsapu and put him at the disposal of the judiciary to respond to the accusations against him."
Kasai-Oriental is one of the 26 provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is a new Province, created in 2015 from the Tshilenge District and the city of Mbuji-Mayi, both part of the larger, pre-2015 Kasai-Oriental province. "The new province's territory corresponds to the historic Sud-Kasaà ¯ province that existed the early period of post-colonial Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1963 and 1966," says Wikipedia.
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