EU says its DR Congo election observers can’t deploy

The EU said Tuesday (28 November) that a team of election observers sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo ahead of 20 December polls cannot spread out around the country because of “security reasons”.

The team of around 40 is “currently unable to deploy throughout the country due to security reasons. This is rendering the necessary long-term observation impossible,” an EU spokesperson told AFP.

“The EU is currently considering the available options and is in touch with DRC authorities,” the spokesman said.

The DRC, an impoverished central African nation of about 100 million people, is in the grip of unrest, with dozens of armed groups active in its east, where UN peacekeepers and East African Community troops are deployed.

Campaigning for the parliamentary and presidential elections kicked off on 19 November.

Incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi, 60, is running for re-election. One of his challengers is Denis Mukwege, a Nobel prize-winning gynaecologist who started a hospital and foundation in the conflict-torn east.

The EU’s top foreign policy official, Josep Borrell, on 6 November announced the EU’s first electoral observer mission to the country in over a decade.

He said “the next months will be crucial for democratic consolidation in the DRC and bilateral DRC-EU cooperation.”

 Political clashes leave one dead in DR Congo’s east

An opposition party official was killed Tuesday during clashes between rival political groups in the restive east of DRC, sources said.

Tuesday’s clashes erupted when a campaign motorcade of opposition presidential candidate Moise Katumbi was making its way through Kindu, the regional capital of the eastern Maniema province.

Witnesses said Katumbi supporters clashed with backers of the ruling Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) party of President Tshisekedi.

The unrest killed Dido Kasingi, a lawyer and father of six who was the president of the youth chapter of Katumbi’s party, “Together for the Republic”, a party spokesman told reporters in Kinshasa.

The opposition party spokesman, Herve Diakiese, accused the Maniema governor of instigating the unrest.

“The assailants set on the motorcade from inside the residence of governor Idrissa Mangala,” he said, saying it amounted to “an obvious premeditated attack.”

Reached by telephone by AFP, Mangala said the violence erupted “following completely barbaric behaviour” by the opposition supporters.

He said the victim “was not killed by the demonstrators, he was mowed down by a vehicle” in Katumbi’s motorcade during an “altercation”.

The mayor of the city where the violence took place, Augustin Mulamba, confirmed that clashes occurred between the supporters of the rival parties, without providing other details.

(Edited by Georgi Gotev)

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