DRC ex-fighter demo dispersed
2009-11-11 20:10
Kinshasa - Police fired in the air to break up a demonstration by ex-combatants in restive northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local authorities said on Wednesday.
Demobilised soldiers on Tuesday "besieged a naval colonel to ask for their reintegration papers and their backpay", said Eugenie Mwanya, mayor of the town where the incident happened.
"Police fired repeatedly into the air to disperse them" and to rescue the officer, Mwanya told AFP.
Nobody was injured or arrested.
Mbandaka is the capital of Equateur province, the stronghold of former warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba, who has been held by the International Criminal Court since 2008 for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out in 2002-2003 by his militia in the Central African Republic.
Some of the former fighters who demonstrated on Tuesday belonged to the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC), which Bemba ran until his arrest.
In 2004, the DRC's government launched an ambitious programme to disarm and reintegrate some 150 000 former fighters from the war that ravaged the country in 1998-2003.
Under the programme, each demobilised fighter was to get €50 and then €25 a month for a year to make it easier for them to find jobs if they did not join the regular army. But since 2006, the commission overseeing the programme has run into financial difficulties.
Tuesday's demonstration came against a background of tension in Equateur province, officials said, since a new governor is to be elected on Friday in the sole province to be run by the MLC.
The former governor was dismissed last January for embezzlement.