{"id":25332,"date":"2016-05-14T04:25:28","date_gmt":"2016-05-14T04:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/dr-congo-police-disperse-thousands-at-opposition\/"},"modified":"2016-05-14T04:24:56","modified_gmt":"2016-05-14T04:24:56","slug":"dr-congo-police-disperse-thousands-at-opposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/dr-congo-police-disperse-thousands-at-opposition\/","title":{"rendered":"DR Congo police disperse thousands at opposition rally"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Thousands of supporters protest at accusations that opposition candidate Moise Katumbi was plotting a coup.}<\/p>\n<p>Congo police fired tear gas at thousands of supporters rallying outside the prosecutor&#8217;s office where a leading opposition presidential candidate was facing a hearing over accusations he was plotting a coup.<\/p>\n<p>Friday&#8217;s incident was the third time in five days that police fired tear gas at supporters of Moise Katumbi, the former governor of the country&#8217;s copper-mining region, who the government has accused of hiring mercenaries as part of the plot against the government, according to the Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities have given scant details about the allegations made last week, which Katumbi denies.<\/p>\n<p>He says the accusations are aimed at derailing his campaign to succeed President Joseph Kabila, who has ruled since 2001, but is barred from standing for a third term in an election set for November.<\/p>\n<p>Police also threw rocks at the demonstrators, who flocked towards Katumbi when he arrived outside the prosecutor general&#8217;s office. One rock hit Katumbi&#8217;s older brother, Abraham, in the face.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s sad that there is not a state of law &#8211; police officers who throw stones and wound my older brother,&#8221; Katumbi said before entering the building.<\/p>\n<p>The hearing was suspended after Katumbi said he felt unwell due to the tear gas.<\/p>\n<p>Dozens were killed in January 2015 in protests over a proposed revision of the electoral law that critics said was a ploy to keep Kabila in power beyond the end of his mandate. Kabila has not said whether he will leave power this year.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-12291 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/protestors.jpg\" alt=\"Friday&#039;s dispersal was the third time in five days that police fired tear gas at thousands of supporters of Moise Katumbi \" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Thousands of supporters protest at accusations that opposition candidate Moise Katumbi was plotting a coup.} Congo police fired tear gas at thousands of supporters rallying outside the prosecutor&#8217;s office where a leading opposition presidential candidate was facing a hearing over accusations he was plotting a coup. Friday&#8217;s incident was the third time in five days [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[99],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25332"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25332"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}