Rebels criticised for reportedly harassing human rights worker

The Congolese human rights group, L’Association africaine de defense des droits d’homme (ASADHO), has expressed concern at the alleged detention and harassment of human rights activist Sylvain Mudimbi Masudi by the rebel Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Mouvement de liberation (RCD-ML). The director of the Kisangani-based ‘Friends of Nelson Mandela’ NGO was arrested in Beni by Ernest Wamba dia Wamba’s rebel group after returning from an international human rights workshop in Geneva, ASADHO said in a statement received by IRIN on Monday. He was later expelled, in arbitrary and illegal manner, from RCD-ML territory near the Ugandan frontier town of Kasindi, it said. The statement called on the RCD-ML to allow Masudi return to his organisation in Kisangani and to refrain from its intensifying harassment of human rights activists in rebel-held territory.