Police arrested and violently dispersed scores of pro-democracy activists on Monday protesting against controversial voting machines that the government wants to use in key elections later this year. The pro-democracy movement Lucha (Struggle for Change) says the South Korean touch screen voting machines will pave the way for fraud in the long-delayed December 23 ballot. Police detained 22 Lucha activists briefly in Kinshasa as they demonstrated outside the office of the national electoral commission (CENI), police said. “They tried to march but were arrested by police. But there was no reason to hold them so I let them go,” Kinshasa police chief Sylvano Kasongo said.
“Youths from Lucha came. They weren’t scared and went right up to the CENI shouting ‘No voting machines’,” a street vendor told AFP.
“They did not resist arrest,” another witness said.
In Goma, the capital of the restive Nord-Kivu province, police violently dispersed a Lucha protest beating several activists with batons, an AFP reporter said.
Full Article: Scores of pro-democracy activists held in DRC | News24.
