{KINSHASA-Democratic Republic of Congo will free five pro-democracy activists in the next few days, the justice minister said on Friday, to try to appease the opposition and ease negotiations over an election timetable after a delayed presidential vote.}<\/p>\n
Opponents accuse President Joseph Kabila of deliberately delaying the vote in order to cling to power beyond the end of his mandate in December, a charge his supporters deny.<\/p>\n
Opposition leaders could not be reached for comment but Friday’s news looked unlikely to appease the main opposition alliance, which dismissed a similar promise to release prisoners last week as insufficient and boycotted the talks.<\/p>\n
Only four of the 24 prisoners named last week turned out to still be in jail, and several prominent political figures were not on the list of names.<\/p>\n
Thambwe said on Friday that he expected those four to be released at the weekend.<\/p>\n
Talks between the government, its political opponents and civil society representatives started this week after authorities said last weekend that a vote set for November could not be held before July as they enroll millions of new voters.<\/p>\n
Authorities have arrested dozens of people in the last year, who the opposition deem political prisoners, and about 40 people were killed in January 2015 in protests over a possible election delay, drawing criticism from the United Nations.<\/p>\n
Justice Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba told reporters in the capital Kinshasa that five activists – four from the youth group Lucha based in the eastern city of Goma and one from Kinshasa-based pro-democracy group Filimbi – would soon be released.<\/p>\n
“The formalities will be taken care of starting today, and they should be able to leave Makala prison in the next two or three days,” he said.<\/p>\n
Kabila took power when his father was assassinated in 2001, then won disputed elections in 2006 and 2011. Congo has not experienced a peaceful transition of power since independence from Belgium in 1960.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{KINSHASA-Democratic Republic of Congo will free five pro-democracy activists in the next few days, the justice minister said on Friday, to try to appease the opposition and ease negotiations over an election timetable after a delayed presidential vote.} Opponents accuse President Joseph Kabila of deliberately delaying the vote in order to cling to power beyond […]<\/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":[2475],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-28091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-voice-of-america"],"bylines":[{"id":2475,"name":"VOICE OF AMERICA","slug":"voice-of-america","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":2475,"name":"VOICE OF AMERICA","slug":"voice-of-america","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\/28091","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=28091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28091"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=28091"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=28091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}