{"id":27885,"date":"2016-08-20T03:08:27","date_gmt":"2016-08-20T03:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/dr-congo-pardons-24-political-prisoners-to-give\/"},"modified":"2016-08-20T03:08:07","modified_gmt":"2016-08-20T03:08:07","slug":"dr-congo-pardons-24-political-prisoners-to-give","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/dr-congo-pardons-24-political-prisoners-to-give\/","title":{"rendered":"DR Congo pardons 24 political prisoners to give way for election talks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Democratic Republic of Congo&#8217;s government announced pardons on Friday for 24 people considered political prisoners by the opposition, in a bid to ease tensions ahead of a presidential election set for November.}<\/p>\n<p>Opposition leaders had demanded the release of 26 prisoners as a precondition for participation in talks on the election with President Joseph Kabila, who is due to step down after two terms in office.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The government &#8230; has decided that we can lift the measures (against them) to allow these people to be immediately liberated with the exception of two cases,&#8221; Justice Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba told a news conference.<\/p>\n<p>Those liberated include youth activists arrested in what the United Nations and human rights groups said was a growing crackdown on freedom of expression ahead of the election.<\/p>\n<p>They include Fred Bauma and Yves Mawkambula, detained on charges of plotting against President Kabila since their arrests at a March 2015 workshop to promote youth participation in politics. The two men not freed are political party leaders accused of sexual assault and real estate fraud respectively.<\/p>\n<p>The African Union facilitator of those talks, former Togolese prime minister Edem Kodjo, applauded the government&#8217;s decision and said the talks would begin next week. There was no immediate comment from the opposition.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-14389 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/kabila.jpg\" alt=\"Democratic Republic of Congo&#039;s President Joseph Kabila.\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Democratic Republic of Congo&#8217;s government announced pardons on Friday for 24 people considered political prisoners by the opposition, in a bid to ease tensions ahead of a presidential election set for November.} Opposition leaders had demanded the release of 26 prisoners as a precondition for participation in talks on the election with President Joseph Kabila, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[2460],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-27885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-the-east-african"],"bylines":[{"id":2460,"name":"The East African","slug":"the-east-african","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":2460,"name":"The East African","slug":"the-east-african","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\/27885","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=27885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27885"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=27885"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=27885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}