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Despite the ban, protesters gathered after morning Mass on Sunday to march through the streets, accompanied by members of the clergy.<\/p>\n
Local media outlet Radio Okapi reported protests in Kinshasa, Kisangani, and Bukavu. Other cities remain quiet, it reports, though a heavy police presence has been seen in many places.<\/p>\n
Radio Okapi also later said that one of its journalists had been wounded by a bullet in the Lemba district of the capital.<\/p>\n
The UN mission in the country – which has been running continuously since 1999 – said it deployed its troops to the streets to observe and record any violence.<\/p>\n
President Kabila has been in power since 2001, and was supposed to step down after his second and final term came to an end in 2016.<\/p>\n
Under a deal reached more than a year ago, he was due to step down by the end of 2017 – but that has not happened.<\/p>\n
Instead, the election to replace him, originally planned for 2016, has now been delayed until December 2018.<\/p>\n
The country’s powerful Catholic Church has been a voice of opposition to Mr Kabila. The Church also called for the demonstrations in late December which led to at least seven deaths, according to UN peacekeepers.<\/p>\n
Dozens were arrested in the aftermath of those protests.<\/p>\n
Sunday’s demonstrations were also backed by the country’s Muslim community. Before the march, representative Cheikh Ali Mwinyi M’Kuur told AFP: “I ask the authorities to avoid repressing the march.”<\/p>\n
“If they decide to repress, there will be no peace. But if they let the march take place, they will respect the constitution and peace will prevail,” he said.<\/p>\n
DR Congo’s evangelical Christian churches also lent their support to the march organised by their Catholic counterparts.<\/p>\n
–
\nBy: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least six people have been killed in widespread protests in the Democratic Republic of Congo, United Nations sources say. Protesters are demanding that President Joseph Kabila – whose expected term of office expired more than a year ago – should step down. Police have used tear gas to disperse protesters in Kinshasa, where UN […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":393791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[107,11],"tags":[5904,16335,1733],"yoast_head":"\n