KINSHASA - The Democratic Republic of Congo should reform its security forces and prosecute members accused of raping, murdering and torturing suspected opponents of President Joseph Kabila, Amnesty International said on Thursday.
The British-based rights body said government security, intelligence and police services continue to abuse human rights despite last year's landmark elections, designed to end years of war and chaos in the vast, unruly central African state.
"Far from protecting the people of the DRC, the state security services remain agents of torture and death," it said.
Amnesty said confused and conflicting lines of command and a culture of human rights violations had contributed to widespread abuse surrounding the elections, in which Kabila defeated opposition leader Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former rebel leader.
Coquette Nsinga, a 25-year-old student and a member of Bemba's political party, was led from her cell at night and raped by five police officers last November, two weeks after she and her mother were arrested following the final poll, it said.
In particular, Amnesty said security forces had abused civilians and even members of other services suspected of supporting Bemba after Bemba loyalists fought Kabila troops in two days of bloodshed in the capital Kinshasa last March in which up to 600 people were killed.
Amnesty cited accounts of government forces executing dozens of people detained at the city's Tshatshi military camp.
TORTURE
