At least one person has been killed and two others injured in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as security forces dispersed anti-government protesters, local media and human rights activists said.<\/p>\n
Security forces shot live ammunition and tear gas at demonstrators as they tried to march in the capital, Kinshasa, on Sunday to demand that President Joseph Kabila step down.<\/p>\n
Organised by the Catholic Church, the marches were meant to start after Sunday mass, but armed forces surrounded the city\u2019s main churches and blocked several roads, Reuters news agency reported.<\/p>\n
Jean-Mobert Senga, a Congo researcher for Amnesty International, said security forces fired live ammunition at peaceful protesters in the city\u2019s Saint Augustin and Saint Benoit neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe population is fuming in anger in the neighbourhoods,\u201d he wrote on Twitter.<\/p>\n
Ida Sawyer, Central Africa director for Human Rights Watch, said a Congolese activist was \u201cshot dead\u201d outside St Benoit church, \u201cas security forces disperse peaceful protesters yet again\u201d.<\/p>\n
Internet and SMS services had been cut since Sunday morning, Sawyer wrote on Twitter, amid \u201creports of others wounded, arrested across [the] country\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Catholic Church has organised a handful of protests since the end of last year, after the DRC failed to hold presidential elections.<\/p>\n
Under a 2016 agreement, brokered by the church, between the Congolese government and opposition groups, Kabila agreed to organise presidential, legislative and provincial elections by the end of 2017.<\/p>\n
But, at the end of December, the president announced the vote would be postponed until the end of 2018 to account for delays in voter registration.<\/p>\n
Election officials have hinted that polls may not be possible even then because of financial and logistical constraints.<\/p>\n
The delays have led to increasing frustration among many Congolese citizens.<\/p>\n
In January, at least five protesters were killed after security forces opened fire on banned demonstrations in Kinshasa.<\/p>\n
Though led by church-affiliated activists, the protests have been supported by Congolese civil society groups, who fear Kabila is trying to \u201cestablish a dictatorship\u201d in the country.<\/p>\n
Congo \u201cis going through a particularly turbulent time in its history\u201d, the Civil Society Action Collective, a coalition of civil society groups, said in a statement before Sunday\u2019s march.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe power in place persists by executing a scorched-earth strategy to keep itself in power,\u201d the coalition said.<\/p>\n
One of the main organising groups also wrote in a statement before the protests that \u201cour people no longer believe in the political will of our current leaders to ensure a peaceful transition of power,\u201d Reuters reported.\u2014 www.aljazeera.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At least one person has been killed and two others injured in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as security forces dispersed anti-government protesters, local media and human rights activists said. Security forces shot live ammunition and tear gas at demonstrators as they tried to march in the capital, Kinshasa, on Sunday to demand that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":61409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61410,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61405\/revisions\/61410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}