At least 129 people died during an attempted prison break at the largest prison in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country’s authorities said on Tuesday. It was the latest upheaval to hit the overcrowded detention facility, notorious for conditions that human rights groups have long called inhumane.
Prisoners said they were kept in suffocating cells without water and electricity, and some initially collapsed to escape the heat.
The stampede was responsible for most of the deaths, but at least 24 inmates were killed by gunfire early Monday as they tried to escape from Makala Central Prison, according to Congo’s interior minister, Jackman Shabani.
He said At Platform X that 59 people were injured and there were “some cases of rape of women” without giving further details. As of late Tuesday, it was unclear if any inmates had escaped.
Makala is the only prison in Kinshasa, the capital of the Congo and one of Africa’s most populous cities. Its intended capacity is 1,500 people but it holds at least 15,000, Samuel Mbemba, Congo’s deputy minister for justice, said in an interview.
The violence comes as Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi is in Beijing for a forum on China-Africa cooperation and adds to the challenges facing the central African country. Home to more than 100 million people, Congo is battling multiple crises, including a Malignant mpox outbreak And A conflict in its eastern sector which has killed more than six million people and displaced millions more over the past three decades.
According to four inmates inside the jail who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their safety, with temperatures near 90 degrees outside, inmates went without running water or electricity to fans for more than a day and a half.
Many felt they were suffocating, one said, and on Sunday evening some broke down their cell doors to escape.
A Congolese intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the incidents publicly, said guards opened fire early Monday morning when the inmates tried to escape the prison perimeter.
Stanis Bujakera Tshiamala, a prominent Congolese journalist who served time at Makala last year but has since been released, Video Shows a chaotic scene, with prisoners running outside as shots ring out around them. in Another video He shared that, which was filmed at night, several inmates are standing around what appears to be a corpse on the prison grounds.
Several videos verified by The New York Times, filmed inside the prison complex, showed the aftermath of the attempted jailbreak.
In a very graphic video, a large crowd stands around at least 25 lifeless bodies in a central alley between prison blocks. The bodies were loaded into trucks and brought in from the ground Another video Filmed through the eastern perimeter of the prison complex, while the third Video Thick black smoke was seen billowing from the building near the prison entrance.
Interior Minister Mr. Shabani said the inmates who died of gunshot wounds were shot “after a warning”. A Congolese government spokesman, Patrick Muya, was traveling with Mr. Tshisekedi in Beijing and did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. It was unclear what happened to the prison’s water and power.
Human rights groups have long condemned the appalling detention conditions at Makala prison, a facility built in 1957 before Congo became independent from Belgium, and which has seen little repair since then. Its population ranges from those convicted of minor crimes to high-profile and political prisoners.
Last year, more than 500 prisoners died of suffocation and various diseases, according to Kinshasa-based human rights advocate Emmanuel Edu Cole. He and an inmate said that as of Tuesday, there was still no running water and nothing to eat because the food depot had burned down.
Undated videos As shared by Congolese journalist Mr. Bujakera earlier this summer, prisoners, cramped in detention rooms and toilets, cannot sit or sleep properly.
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