GENEVA – Prison conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo have deteriorated, with cases of torture and sexual violence being reported in detention centers run by the intelligence services, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Tuesday.
Congo’s notoriously overcrowded, violent and unsanitary prisons came under the spotlight last month after more than 260 female inmates were sexually assaulted during an attempted mass escape from the Makala Central Prison in the capital Kinshasa.
At least 129 people were killed when prison guards used live fire against the inmates trying to break free from the prison, which official figures say has a capacity of 1,500 prisoners, but housed more than 15,000 people.
In a human rights briefing on Tuesday, High Commissioner Volker Turk said prisoners in Congo were being kept in “disastrous conditions” without access to lawyers or contact with their families.
“In detention centers run by the intelligence services, in particular, a number of detainees are subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including sexual violence,” he told the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Congo’s army, which oversee the intelligence services and their detention centers, said he had not been informed about Turk’s comments.
When he came to power in 2019, Tshisekedi promised to close the intelligence services’ detention centers, long notorious for violently mistreating detainees.
After last month’s prison break Tshisekedi ordered an investigation and a review of Congo’s main prisons to reduce overcrowding.
But four U.N. sources in Congo who did not wish to be named said they had been denied access to the intelligence services’ detention centers for more than a year, and had been unable to visit Makala since last month’s incident.
