Calls to extend prisoner release

The release of hundreds of prisoners from the penal and rehabilitation centre in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), will decongest the prison and should be replicated elsewhere in the country, a senior government official said.

The release followed the recommendations of a judicial commission, against a background of the adoption of a proposed law by the national assembly granting amnesty to armed groups in the Kivu region in the eastern DRC.

The prison in Kinshasa, according to official figures, held at least 4,000 inmates, despite being designed for 1,200. Mutombo Bakafwa Senda, Minister of Justice and Human Rights, said the application of similar administrative measures in other parts of the country should be done fairly.

According to the amnesty law, combatants in the east may not be prosecuted for crimes committed during the conflict but could be forced to pay reparations. The law, however, has yet to be brought before the senate for a vote that would see it published and enforced.

It was proposed in the context of an agreement between the DRC government and armed groups in Goma, the main town in the province of North Kivu, on 23 January, that was intended to end fighting in the region.

At least 116 civilian prisoners were released on 25 July. Another 142 military and police prisoners were released later.

Human rights activists, however, said the releases had been selective. "It is good to free people to decongest the prisons but we deplore the fact that the measure is marred by discrimination," Floribert Chebeya, the head of the human rights NGO, Voice of the Voiceless (Voix des Sans Voix), said.

Some of those who had been kept in prison, Chebeya said, were accused of assassinating the former president, Laurent-Desire Kabila, in January 2001.

According to observers, conditions in DRC prisons are generally poor. Since January, at least 26 prisoners have died of hunger in the central prison of Mbuji Mayi, the main town in the province of Kasai Orientale.

Meanwhile, NGOs have appealed for increased protection of civilians caught up in conflict in the DRC. In a report, the Congo Advocacy Coalition said at least 150,000 people had been forced to flee their homes due to ongoing fighting since the Goma peace agreement was signed.

The newly displaced add to the one million IDPs who fled their homes in earlier waves of violence in North and South Kivu. "The peace agreement has failed to silence the guns, and the people of eastern Congo continue to suffer and to run for their lives," said Juliette Prodhan, head of Oxfam Great Britain in DRC. "The parties to the agreement must urgently redouble their efforts to act on the commitments they made to protect civilians."

Women and girls have been particularly affected by the continued violence. According to the report, more than 2,200 cases of rape were recorded in June 2008 in North Kivu province alone, representing only a small portion of the total. At least 200 civilians have been killed in the violence.

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