Human rights activists in the Democratic Republic of Congo are denouncing acts of violence by police in Kinshasa against Catholic parishes and marchers on Feb. 16. Police were attempting to halt a series of commemorations of the 20th anniversary of the so-called “Christians massacre” on Feb. 16, 1992, when Christian demonstrators were killed by troops loyal to the Mobutu Sese Seko regime. Some marchers were also demanding the nullification of recent elections, described by many observers, including Congo’s Catholic bishops, as fraudulent. Marchers at one parish were surrounded by police and trucks equipped with water cannons and prevented from demonstrating. At other parishes peaceful marchers were dispersed by police with tear gas grenades, and at the Parish of Saint Joseph Matonge, women were beaten by police, according to witnesses. On Feb. 13 the Congolese government also pulled three television stations off the air, two of them close to the opposition leader Jean-Pierre Bemba and one belonging to the Catholic Church.
Turmoil in Congo
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
This week, a music festival returns to the Chiquitos missions in Bolivia, which the Jesuits established between 1691 and 1760. The story of the Jesuit "reductions" was made popular by the 1986 film ‘The Mission.’
The world can change for the better only when people are out in the world, “not lying on the couch,” Pope Francis told some 6,000 Italian schoolchildren.
Our theology of relics tells us something beautiful and profound not only about God but about what we believe about materiality itself.
"3 Body Problem" is an imaginative Netflix adaptation of Cixin Liu's trilogy of sci-fi novels—and yet is mostly true to the books.