Security forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have fired live rounds of ammunition and tear gas to disperse demonstrators who burned tires and allegedly attacked Ebola centers in a protest against a decision to exclude them from the presidential election.
The electoral commission (CENI) announced on Wednesday, 26th December 2018 that it was canceling voting in the election on Sunday in the eastern cities of Beni and Butembo and their surrounding areas, following the continued spread of Ebola outbreak and militia attacks in the region.
It was gathered that the affected towns are the stronghold of the opposition to the outgoing president, Joseph Kabila. The decision was perceived by local politicians as an avenue to swing the vote in favor of his preferred candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary.
According to Giscard Yere, a Beni resident, there are group of demonstrators who wanted to enter the CENI office to demand the withdrawal of the decision. But the police officers and soldiers who were there fired to disperse the demonstrators.
Protesters ransacked an Ebola isolation centre in Beni and it is unsuspecting patients fled, said Aruna Abedi, the deputy director of Ebola response in the area.
Also, the protesters attacked the office of the Government agency coordinating the response in Beni before UN peacekeepers pushed them back, Abedi added. They also tried to force the door of the centre chanting hostile songs against the Government.
Col Safari Kazingufu, the police commander in Beni, said his forces were deployed across the city to restore order, including around Ebola treatment centres.
The cities of Beni and Butembo, as well as other rural areas around them, have been dealing with an Ebola outbreak. It was assessed as the second-deadliest on record since August 2018 but health authorities had repeatedly said it would not prevent the voting processes.
The CENI also canceled the vote in the western city of Yumbi because of ethnic violence last week, where over 100 people were reported killed.
The election to replace Kabila, who has governed the country since the assassinated of his father in 2001, was scheduled to take place in 2016 but has been repeatedly delayed until this time.
The development triggered violent protests in which security forces killed dozens of people across the country. It also stoked militia violence in DRC’s eastern borderlands with Rwanda and Uganda, as armed groups moved to exploit a perceived power vacuum in the area.
