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OPPOSITION campaigners were arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday after a demonstration against the introduction of new voting machines for December’s presidential elections.
More than 30 members of the opposition organisation Lucha were detained by police. Tension is rising in the country after authorities banned two opposition candidates, including the multimillionaire former governor of mineral-rich Katanga province Moise Katumbi, from standing in the long-delayed poll.
Lucha has branded the new electronic voting devices “cheating machines” and raised concerns over current President Joseph Kabila’s influence over the elections.
The Congolese independence leader’s uncompromising speech about 80 years of European colonial brutality and injustice went round the world in 1960, and within months, he had been executed by Belgian and CIA-backed forces, writes KEITH BARLOW
