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Africa|At Least 129 People Die in Jailbreak at Congo’s Largest Prison
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/world/africa/congo-prison-jailbreak-kinshasa.html
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The government said that at least 24 inmates had been shot dead as they attempted to escape from Makala Central Prison, which rights organizations have long warned is dangerously overcrowded.
By Elian Peltier and Sanjana Varghese
Reporting from Dakar, Senegal and London.
Sept. 3, 2024, 8:35 a.m. ET
At least 129 people died during an attempted jailbreak at the largest prison in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country’s authorities said on Tuesday. It was the latest crisis to hit an overcrowded detention facility notorious for conditions that human rights groups have long decried as inhumane.
A stampede was to blame for most of the deaths, but at least 24 inmates were killed by gunfire as they tried to escape from the Makala Central Prison early on Monday, according to Congo’s interior minister, Jacquemain Shabani. He said on the platform X that 59 people had been injured and that there had been “some cases of women raped,” without providing further details. As of Tuesday afternoon, it was unclear if any inmates had escaped.
Makala is the only prison in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital and one of Africa’s most populous cities. Its intended capacity is 1,500 people but it has held at least 12,000 inmates, according to an October 2023 report from Amnesty International, the human rights organization.
The violence occurred as President Felix Tshisekedi of Congo 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 deadly mpox outbreak and a conflict in its eastern region that has killed more than six million people and displaced millions of others over the past three decades.
Gunfire erupted Monday night in the prison, according to local news reports and videos posted on social media. Stanis Bujakera Tshiamala, a well-known Congolese journalist who served time at Makala last year but has since been released, shared a video showing a chaotic scene, with inmates running outside as shots rang out around them. In another video he shared that was filmed at night, several inmates are standing around what appears to be a corpse within the prison grounds.
Several videos verified by The New York Times as being filmed inside the prison complex showed the aftermath of the attempted jailbreak.
