Kinshasa, Congo – Scores of homeless children and others living on the streets of Congo’s capital have been rounded up and accused of starting a protest that led to violence as an increasingly tense nation awaits presidential-election results.
Advocates for street children said those arrested were scapegoats, but Interior Minister Denis Kalume was quoted on state radio Monday as saying the 337 homeless people, including 87 children and 15 mothers, had “provoked this (violence) by disturbing the peace.”
Kalume said they were being taken outside the capital for “social training.”
Violence erupted Saturday between supporters of President Joseph Kabila and Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba, the contenders in a presidential runoff late last month. The governor of the Congolese capital said gun and mortar fire killed three civilians and a soldier in front of Bemba’s home – the scene of the weekend fighting.
By Monday, Congolese soldiers had taken up positions in a nearby cemetery, some sleeping on bullet-scarred gravestones that used to serve as beds for street children. None of the children, usually a ubiquitous reminder of Congo’s devastation, were in sight Monday morning.
On Sunday, there was supposed to be a soccer championship among street children’s soccer teams, whose uniforms were donated by the government. It never happened because the children feared arrest.
The latest eruption came as the Independent Electoral Commission posted results from 99.37 percent of the vote-counting centers that had Kabila with 59 percent to 41 percent for Bemba.
