The reasons for the escape from Makala prison in Kinshasa, on the night of Sunday 1is September, remain unknown, but the provisional toll is already considerable. The Congolese authorities report the death of at least 129 detainees, including 24 by gunfire, after being warned. “The others by jostling, suffocation and some women raped”said Interior Minister Jacquemain Shabani in a video statement sent to the press.
The heavy human toll does not, however, explain how a hundred inmates of this overcrowded prison, the largest penitentiary in the country, were able to escape in the middle of the night, a little before 2 a.m. While power cuts have been mentioned, the Minister of Justice, Constant Mutamba, has denounced “premeditated acts of sabotage” and promised that “investigations [sont] in progress “The Interior Ministry also said that 59 prisoners were injured in the events and “deplores the fire in the administrative buildings, the registry, the infirmary and the food depots.”
Read the decryption | In the DRC, the “inhumane” detention conditions of Makala prison
Add to your selections
Several videos have since emerged on social media, including one filmed inside the prison on the night of the escape, showing inmates fleeing to the sound of bursts of automatic weapons fire. The gunshots rang out for several hours, according to testimonies collected by Agence France-Presse. Another video document, recorded Monday morning, shows dozens of inert bodies lined up along the perimeter wall of the Makala penitentiary center.
The manner in which Congolese security forces suppressed the mutiny is also unclear. “The disproportion of the repression is scandalous, in a penitentiary centre where we already know that the conditions of detention are appalling”notes Hervé Diakese, lawyer and spokesperson for the opposition party Together for the Republic. “The repression is disproportionate but not unprecedented”he worries, citing the Kilwa massacre which occurred in August in Haut-Katanga, where ten civilians lost their lives under army bullets, and which raises questions about the methods and responsibility of the police.
A death house built in 1957, never modernized
The Makala massacre has once again brought the issue of overcrowding in Congolese prisons to the centre of the national debate. With a capacity of 1,500 places, the penitentiary houses around 15,000 prisoners – many of whom have not been convicted and are languishing in pre-trial detention.
You have 39.47% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
