The reasons for the escape from Makala prison in Kinshasa on Sunday evening, 1Ahem September, it is not yet known, but the provisional toll is already considerable. The Congolese authorities report the death of at least 129 detainees, 24 of them by gunshot, following summons. “The others were pushed, suffocated and some women were raped”Interior Minister Jacquemain Shabani said in a video statement sent to the press.
The high number of victims, however, does not explain how a hundred inmates from this overcrowded prison, the largest penitentiary in the country, were able to escape in the middle of the night, shortly before 2 a.m. If power cuts were to be mentioned, denounced the Minister of Justice, Constant Mutamba. “premeditated acts of sabotage” and promised that “research [sont] in progress “The Ministry of the Interior also states that 59 prisoners were injured in the events and “It regrets the fire in the administrative buildings, the registry, the infirmary and the food warehouses.”
Several videos have since appeared on social media, including one filmed inside the prison on the night of the escape, showing inmates fleeing at the sound of bursts of automatic weapons fire. The shooting lasted for several hours, according to testimonies collected by Agence France-Presse. Another video document, recorded on Monday morning, reveals dozens of lifeless bodies lined up along the perimeter wall of the Makala prison.
Vagueness also surrounds how Congolese security forces suppressed the riot. “The disproportionate repression is scandalous, in a penitentiary where we already know that the conditions of detention are terrible”says Hervé Diakese, a lawyer and spokesman for the opposition party Ensemble pour la République. “The repression is disproportionate but not unprecedented”He is concerned, citing the Kilwa massacre in August in Upper Katanga, where ten civilians were killed by army bullets, and which calls into question the methods and responsibility of the security forces.
A dying building built in 1957, never modernised
The Makala massacre has once again brought the issue of overcrowding in Congolese prisons to the forefront of national debate. With a capacity of 1,500, the penitentiary houses some 15,000 prisoners, many of whom have not been convicted and are languishing in pretrial detention.
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